401–410 of 575 posts
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The US health care system isn't a good example of anything except regulatory capture. (It's a bad example of a ton of things, including both "government run health care" - thanks VA - and "free market health care") EDIT: though it does still provide the best care in the world, if you're able to pay for it.
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The USPS is self supporting from postage. Your taxes aren't funding a "broken" business model. But they are funding a bunch of people trying to interfere with, and force the USPS out of business.
USPS is self supporting? It doesn't seem like it. According to this report by they feds they've been operating at a loss for most years since 2008. $2.1B loss in 2018. https://www.prc.gov/sites/default/files/reports/FY%202018%20...
No private courier would ever be saddled with a requirement like that. It's clear that this requirement was put into place by people who want to make the USPS look bad so it's an easier argument to kill it.
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"It's just mind blowing why we should care about companies more than people." So food is really important and vital. Should the government be in charge of growing and distributing food? Of course not. This experiment has been tried with horribly deadly results. The basic fact of the matter is that the market is far more effective at fairly distributing goods and services. If you look at the major sources of inequalit…
> So food is really important and vital. Should the government be in charge of growing and distributing food? > Of course not. This experiment has been tried with horribly deadly results. I assume you're referencing famines in communist countries, etc. In those instances, the government had a monopoly on food growth and distribution. Your example is irrelevant because the USPS is just one of numerous mail carriers (U…
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Google rose to prominence by capturing the labor of others (links created by users and site authors between sites) and accruing the value of that labor to itself through automation. It effectively swallowed up the value of unpaid labor that existed at a scale with which Altavista could never compete.
Altavista had access to the same web that Google had. Google created a better mousetrap and the world beat a path to its door.
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Exactly, capitalists think in terms of opening new markets so why let people have for free something from which they can make a fortune? This way of thinking is like a cancer that grows on society.
there is no such thing as a free lunch
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The idea that it’s purely narcissistic is without merit. Privatization is about fostering competition to ensure better products are created. Just because the USPS works as is does not mean it couldn’t be better. This is a classic “I like things the way they are” problem. Where the other possibilities are unknown and inexperienced and so are not given equal weight to a decision. I don’t particularly care whether the p…
Public schooling has had a tremendous positive effect on the US and countries world wide. If it is failing, which it is not, it is for the same political reasons as the USPS is “failing”, which it is not.
Now some of that is a familial issue but not all of it.
Has public schooling been a net positive? Oh wow yes, by many miles. Could it be better? By many miles, yes.
Saying it could be better does not negate past contributions.
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The situation of pensions is that the USPS is required by a law created by republicans to pre-pay their retirement fund for the next 75 years, something that no company in the world does. Not only this, but the money they pay is being diverted to the general government accounts, so it is possible that in the future the pension money is not there anyway, if the government decide not to provide the money in the future.…
Quote from the Forbes article I linked to: >"FACT: ALL companies are required to fund any pension promises they make to their employees. (The only exceptions are for top executives, who can lose their pensions if a company goes bankrupt, and for entities that aren’t actually “companies” - state and local governments and churches.) NONE of them are permitted to take a “pay as you go” approach but must contribute to a…
Companies need to fund their pension plans, but only for the portion of time the worker has been employed by them. For example, for FY 2020, the company needs to set aside money corresponding to an additional year of work. But for the USPS, the law requires it to set aside money assuming that the worker will work his entire career for USPS, and project all retirement costs 75 years into the future, even for workers that they haven't even hired yet. In actuary, this is the difference between "actual vested liability", and "total projected liability". The result is clearly absurd. Moreover, this money is not staying in USPS retirement accounts, is going to the government. So it doesn't even guarantee that the money will be there for USPS workers. To add to the injury, USPS is allowed only to invest on treasury bonds, which means that they need to raise even more money than a private company, which is free to invest in any high grade bond.
https://www.businessinsider.com/usps-rise-fall-post-office-c...
Why can't the US Gov bail out the USPS like big banks?
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There are various advocates for allowing the USPS to return to the banking business. They would put the exploitative check cashing stores out of business. Ellen Brown's has written a copy pieces advocating for postal banking. What We Could Do with a Postal Savings Bank: Infrastructure that Doesn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime - https://ellenbrown.com/2013/09/23/what-we-could-do-with-a-po... (2013) This piece concludes by su…
> C.B. Richard Ellis (CBRE), the company holding the exclusive contract to negotiate sales for the $85 billion postal real estate portfolio, has sold off 52 postal properties for at least $79 million less than their fair market value. Worse, the buyers included its own business partners and shareholders, including Goldman Sachs. CBRE is chaired by Richard C. Blum, the husband of US Senator Dianne Feinstein, a family…
Postal banking works really well in the countris in which it exists. The best way to help USPS is to use them as your default shipping method: do so.
why would I want to help the USPS at a cost to me?