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Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

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Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#91

Post by enraged_camel »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #48
throwaway5752 wrote: post #36

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…

>> Retirement benefits should be funded as they are accrued. That is not the problem.

No, that really is the problem. Prefunding pension liabilities is something that literally no company or federal agency ever does, for obvious reasons.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#92

Post by lotsofpulp »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #82
lotsofpulp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, it's still stupid. The government creates dollars. Asking individual agencies to save money for pensions just distorts monetary and fiscal policy. When will people understand fractional reserve banking...

The federal government creates dollars. Ask the taxpayers in IL, NJ, CT, KY, Chicago, Detroit how their money printing presses are doing and if fractional reserve banking is coming to their rescue.

And it still results in devaluation of the dollar. You don’t get to pull resources from the future for free, especially if the expected economic growth doesn’t materialize.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#93

Post by floatingatoll »

jypepin wrote: post #57
floatingatoll wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can return your mail-in ballot to a drop slot / drop box at your local election office, which saves them postage fees and gives you more certainty it arrived. If you can’t spare the time then the mail still works, but for those that are worried, it’s allowed.

I can't vote, but i can drive. Is it legal to drop someone else's ballot to the local election office? I'll drop it for people who can't go.

Varies per state.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#94

Post by missedthecue »

callmeal wrote: post #88
nemothekid wrote: post #10

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

[flagged]

The simplest argument against government run services is that eventually, the people you don't like will be in charge of them

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#95

Post by enraged_camel »

callmeal wrote: post #88
nemothekid wrote: post #10

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

[flagged]

Unfortunately, HN userbase frowns upon what they incorrectly perceive as politicization of topics, so a lot of people will resort to whitewashing in the manner you described in order to avoid getting their posts flag-killed by partisans (which is what will happen to this comment - just watch).

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#96

Post by donw »

zanny wrote: post #78
KorematsuFred wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USPS has a government granted monopoly on letter delivery end it and these problems will also go away.

Is there a legitimate law on the books that Fedex et al cannot legally deliver letters, or is it just that subsidized postage stamps are so cheap no private company can profit off paper mail delivery? Because letters are paper but so are magazines, newspapers, etc that I know are delivered by non-USPS mail carriers. It isn't a very persuasive argument to destroy cheap post for the masses to... let investors make mone…

> Is there a legitimate law on the books that Fedex et al cannot legally deliver letters.

I just learned this, but yes, that appears to be the case! The private express statutes[1] appear to do just that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#97

Post by conception »

qserasera wrote: post #85
lotsofpulp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If anything, all entities promising retirement benefits should be forced to do it the way USPS does 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 tax…

Banking from the post office is a pretty common thing and makes a lot of sense as it gives people a public, non-profit banking avenue for the poor and under served.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#98

Post by happytoexplain »

refurb wrote: post #83
ethanbond wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hate to break it to you, but it’s more complicated than that. You may want to do some reading from the other side, you sound like you’re parroting Democratic talking points. 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.

Being able to produce a counterargument does not qualify the original argument as "parroting talking points".

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#99

Post by mindslight »

leesalminen wrote: post #56
AndrewBissell wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other reasons they want to disband the post office beyond just its impact on voting. If they replace it with private entities it becomes easier to surveil and censor the mail, for instance.

The USPS takes an image of the front of the envelope for every first class letter sent in the USA. It's a safe bet that they're doing OCR of the recipient/sender addresses and store it in a database. USPS Informed Delivery is just a customer-facing result of that long standing program.

The USPS includes legal protections against your mail being opened, and a mandate to serve everyone. Whereas private companies can be fully employed for government surveillance (third party doctrine), sell bulk records to commercial surveillance companies (equifax, google, etc), as well as refusing service to whomever they like (ala MC/Visa).

I agree this isn't the overriding concern of those trying to destroy the USPS, but it's surely a nice bonus.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#100

Post by missedthecue »

zanny wrote: post #78
KorematsuFred wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USPS has a government granted monopoly on letter delivery end it and these problems will also go away.

Is there a legitimate law on the books that Fedex et al cannot legally deliver letters, or is it just that subsidized postage stamps are so cheap no private company can profit off paper mail delivery? Because letters are paper but so are magazines, newspapers, etc that I know are delivered by non-USPS mail carriers. It isn't a very persuasive argument to destroy cheap post for the masses to... let investors make mone…

The USPS actually has two legally enforced monopolies, as per Title 39 of the US Code. One is over the delivery of anything defined as a “letter,” which is within certain size and weight limits. The second is over the use of your mailbox. That is correct: there are criminal violations if anyone puts anything in your mail box that is not US government approved “mail.”
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