81–90 of 325 posts
Are they de-prioritizing all the spam and useless pre-sort stuff? That would be the first order of business for me.
The spam is what pays the bills so it will not get de-prioritized.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The USPS is uniquely shackled by a ridiculous requirement to prefund 75 years worth of pension and medical benefits, and is also barred from raising rates the help pay for it. There is no way any organization can operate that way.
You are correct the problem is that they are now allowed to set prices, but incorrect in that USPS is not required to prefund 75 years of pension and medical benefits. It is required to save for accrued benefits. Which is how it should be. If you purchased, today, a $2,000 annuity starting when you are 65, wouldn’t you want the insurance company to start saving for it now? https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-ab…
Asking individual agencies to save money for pensions just distorts monetary and fiscal policy.
When will people understand fractional reserve banking...
Among other reasons, this is in big part happening due to a large push toward mail-in voting come the next Presidential election. It seems that certain political entities think they will suffer at the poles due to the fact that it’ll be easier to vote. easier voting -> more votes -> undesirable outcomes
Republicans. It is Republicans who think more people voting means they will lose. Now is a time to be absolutely frank and direct with our words and our actions. Our democracy is not invincible. It is not inevitable. It is teetering on the brink and if it falls, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will recover. There is exactly one party who is trying to undermine the most basic principle of our democracy, and t…
NYTimes disagrees with you that higher turnout always helps the Democrats.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/upshot/2020-election-turn...
Typically increased turnout helps the Democrats, but that’s not necessarily true now.
1. Destroy the viability of the post office as a business (a long running campaign)
2. Disenfranchise voters (a relatively recent campaign)
Tens of thousands of people were disenfranchised during the primaries because their ballots were received too late, even if they were postmarked on time. [1]
Tax returns are considered to be submitted on the date of their postmark, but ballots are not. There seems to be an important disconnect here tied to the different incentives for the state.
Dropping ballots off at dropbox makes a lot of sense, but it won't work for everyone. The rules also vary and availability is often poorly communicated. Plus, most people won't expect to have a problem with their ballot being counted until they find out that it wasn't counted.
But the problem doesn't start with submitting your ballot. First you have to successfully register to vote-by-mail (some states require a form to be mailed in), and most importantly you have to actually receive your ballot in time. This also happened during the primaries, and so people had to go vote in person after all (or be disenfranchised). [2]
Lots of things we take for granted will stop working with a failed postal service, but voting is particularly key right now. It is the only path towards attempting to fix the issue at hand.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/07/13/889751095/signed-sealed-undel...
[2] https://time.com/5874571/new-york-state-general-election/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its not a point about government effectiveness or efficiency. They kneecapped the USPS when they forced prefunding of pension liabilities ( https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-off... ). They had more legislative leverage prior to 2018, so they could have done all this much earlier. It is not possible to honestly discuss this in a meaningful way without acknowledging it's 3 months out from a presi…
Retirement benefits should be funded as they are accrued. That is not the problem. The problem is the USPS doesn’t have the power to price their products appropriately in order to pay for their expenses (including payroll which includes retirement benefits). If anything, all entities promising retirement benefits should be forced to do it the way USPS does. In fact, non government entities were forced to via the Pens…
That would be nice but [insert financing excuse here] others cant do it too.
> Too bad it didn’t apply to governments, because if it did, then my kids and I wouldn’t be stuck paying for labor performed 30+ years ago because all the city and state governments decided they can just promise to pay people with future taxpayers’ money by underfunding defined benefit pension plans and retiree healthcare benefits.
Yes but forcing just USPS to do it was an attack on USPS because it has to compete with private companies. State and local run organizations have no such competition thus 'locally too big to fail'.
I've heard of some interesting talk about making a working USPS federal credit union/bank for a variety of services to the public that might prove lucrative and something that would potentially ease USPSs cash troubles. I'm not an expert into the economics about that and it might prove disruptive to a lot of businesses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can it not be less expensive? The private companies don’t have to offer/fund the insane pension benefits that public sector employees get. The public sector pension scandal is insane.
Suppose you were right, and a private service could outcompete USPS. Why haven't they already? There's many delivery services that go to residential homes now, and tons of spam mailers that would love to save a few dollars in those areas where a private service could do it more cheaply. I'd be shocked that if UPS or FedEx thought they could be more profitable than USPS they wouldn't start competing.
RIP Lysander Spooner
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can’t believe arguing that ACTUALLY FUNDING pension liabilities is a horrible thing - this is how every government pension should be funded! You should be screaming about how nearly every state and federal government pension is ridiculously underfunded!
It's literally the only fiscally responsible government pension. It's weird how political it's become, yet it should be the example to follow.
But it’s perfectly fine if a government sells defined benefit pensions and retiree health benefits, saves a fraction of the promised benefits, and then raises taxes in the future to pay for it.
Incredibly frustrating to get mail by USPS over the past couple months and even more frustrating to know this is an intentional kneecapping of the USPS by the administration in order "prove" government services are inefficient to privatize the USPS
Incredibly frustrating to get mail by USPS over the past couple months and even more frustrating to know this is an intentional kneecapping of the USPS by the administration in order "prove" government services are inefficient to privatize the USPS
Its not a point about government effectiveness or efficiency. They kneecapped the USPS when they forced prefunding of pension liabilities ( https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-off... ). They had more legislative leverage prior to 2018, so they could have done all this much earlier. It is not possible to honestly discuss this in a meaningful way without acknowledging it's 3 months out from a presi…