I flew mail for the post office. It’s the most corrupt organization I’ve ever encountered. They would delay the mail so the second shift would have work. They would delay the mail so the majority of it would miss the flights (by majority I mean I’ve flown literally 1 box of crickets) They did this so they could send extra trucks. The brother of the postal service manager owned the trucking business. Seriously I love what the post office does but it needs a massssssssive overhaul.
Lol the people to blame are the ones at the top. Not the guy who literally works the entry level position and is telling you where money should have been spent.
Ehhh I used to bail 1700 bails of hay every day on average, many times quite a bit more, working the top of the elevator in the mile for five years. If you want to sit there and circle jerk about working. I’ve also had a job that I’ve walked 13 miles a day for a year. That was cake. But yeah, I’ve never done anything!
Government entities like the Post Office, MVA are real live examples of why socialism doesn’t work. The USPS has a monopoly and still manages to lose billions a year.
Corruption and just shit management. If they were allowed to fail to a certain degree, for example by losing market share, then they would maybe pull up their pants and get at least even, instead of losing all of our money.
I'd rather pay any other delivery company for a quick and reliable delivery than support that sloppy government cash blackhole
I swear I’ve seen that happen with UPS surepost. My package moves steadily along via UPS and as soon as it hits my post office progress comes to a screeching halt. It can take 2 days for it to travel from my post office, that I could easily walk to, to my house.
Same. For me the average is 3 days from it being delivered to the post office in my area to it being delivered to me. Makes no sense. I've had it take 5 days before. Absolutely no reason. I wish ups and FedEx would stop using SurePost.
Any organization gets big enough and it gets pretty dumb. Government, corporations, private companies, churches - the stupid is unstoppable at a certain scale. Life is tragic.
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
It's actually even worse than when it started. The post office based the contract on much more volume than they are getting now. Since the contract went into effect the Amazon fulfillment center started sending trucks (Independents) with skids of orders early every morning to local rural post offices leaving the POs with the most expensive last mile. They forced Amazon to deliver their packages on sundays in the majority of cities. Then in big metropolitan areas like NYC they started up independent deliveries where drivers can deliver hundreds of packages on a single a block in Manhattan or with a small van with the same volume in a square mile in the outer boros. These deliveries to densly populated areas are gone from the PO. All that is left are the rural areas that are very expensive to go to eery day.
Desperation will lead to seemingly corrupt actions because that is all you have left when a law passed in 2006 forces you to finance your pension obligations for the next 75 years with the money coming in from 2007 to 2016.
Imagine if the law forced you to set aside enough money to pay a 30 year mortgage in 9 years. You would be wise to never take that mortgage.
I mostly vote GOP, but I am comfortable admitting this was all Dubya's fault and the corrupt idiot GOP Congress that paved the way to the most devastating loss in modern political history which begot us Obama and the Demoncrat super majority in both houses of congress.
I can acknowledge that the USPS will have its inefficiencies and things that need reformed, but that 2006 law singling them out for this financially ruinous requirement is the only reason we are talking about USPS and Amazon making deals.
Yes! 28 million missing since 2012 and in subsequent elections. Only way to pull that off without raising any eyebrows would be after the ballot has been returned. If the voter/recipient did not receive the ballot initially, they would request a new one to be sent. And as far as I know, there is only one organization that handles the ballots in transit.
Here is why... government idiots know taxpayers are funding it so they can.
Let me give you an example of why the private industry took so long to finally break out into Space travel, launching satellites and so on.
Before, it used to cost like 250+ million to launch a satellite. It sort of varied based on weight, but it was VERY expensive. Some private space companies started to build rockets and they were claiming they could do it for say, 150 million. What would happen is NASA would step in and say, "We'll launch it for your company for 145 million." Boom, the company would go to NASA, competitor would not be able to fund their rocket plans.
The problem is NASA was literally underbidding others at tens of millions of dollars of a loss to keep competition away. Wasting taxpayer money. NASA is not a lean company. Bloated salaries, expensive pensions. They are outrageously costly to run... always massive budget overages and projection delays. A big problem of NASA, even though I love them, is they are still government run and inefficient.
This is why a company like SpaceX only stood a chance because they had such a radical plan that NASA knew they couldn't underbid by 100-150 million, so when Elon Musk started saying they could launch satellites for 50 million dollars for companies, with their proven SpaceX rocket, and NASA's own embarrassment and problems with its delay after delay after delay of their new rocket, basically they finally had a chance to come around. I mean hell, SpaceX can launch 8 tons into Space at a cost to the company of about 90 million. That sounds like a lot, until you find out NASA was charging 300 million for the same thing, and probably still doing so at a financial loss, or a break-even.
But ya, NASA was literally keeping other companies out of competition for decades by underbidding any competition, even if at a loss.
The US Postal service is afraid of losing a lot of business to competitors, including Amazon's own delivery service so they are literally underbidding the cost, at a loss, to attempt to stay relevant. Government waste at its finest.
I used to work for NASA. It's far worse than anyone realizes. I considered writing a book about it but figured the lawsuits would spoil the fun. NASA used to be a capable agency back in the 50s & 60s, but that's when most people had a good work ethic paired with a patriotic sense of responsibility to do a good job. There are a lot of great people there now, but the freeloaders have ruined it.
250+ million pfffffttttt that would be cheap! ULA was charging 440 million for delta and 800 million for delta heavy. The shuttle cost a billion dollars a launch adjusted to inflation.
But NASA isn't purely at fault. Politicians, who were lobbied by boeing, ULA, and others, were holding NASA budgets hostage.
Because with the waste of a government-run company, a profitable price would be so high that they'd have zero customers, literally. A profitable price is probably something like 10x what they charge now.
What I'm seeing is a government entity with a legally enforced monopoly on a public service. If they were a company they'd have gone out of buisness a long time ago.
If that can't be done right away then an easy compromise would be to scale back mail delivery to 3 or maybe 4 times a week. Nobody is going to care that their junk mail and bills took a day or two longer to arrive since most of us went paperless years ago due to the increase in mail theft in many democrat run areas. The USPS kiosk machines at the post office can handle almost every request I see people waiting in line for and then asking about an employee for at the counter. Most of us with a printer, scissors and tape can take care of everything at home or at the office and just drop the outbound stuff into a mailbox or bin at the USPS.
I wanted to ship some wild rice halfway across the US. The packaged was fairly small and weighed like 2 lbs. They wanted $42. I go on Amazon and realized I could buy and ship 2lbs of wild rice to that address for $24.
Only way that could have happened is if you wanted it overnight. You could have shoved it in a medium flat rate box and paid like $16. And that's still one of the more expensive ways.
Apparently, the Post Office is losing more money thanks to Amazon. But I can’t fault Amazon. Amazon is acting like any reasonable business owner would if they see something that is advantageous to them.
The Post Office has also been hugely corrupt for as long as anyone can remember.
Fire every executive.
The amount of money the do-nothing executives get, a huge waste.
Ban unions blackmailing it.
Of course, remove Amazon from their free ride.
Might be better, and a good time for it, to just close and restart.
USPS out, POUSA in.
It is important, and it isn't as much about the guy in Brooklyn getting his socks delivered, it is about those in farming areas getting their needed mail, it is about older citizens who rely on the mail being looked after, and it should be efficient and something that allows business to post all around the world at a good price.
I am a 6 year mail carrier and wanted to add my thoughts to the debate over the Post Office.
Many of the Post Office's financial problems can be blamed on the union and 3 steps could help return the Post Office to a strong financial position.
The pension system is strong but cash flow is poor. Let people with <7 years retire early, with slightly reduced pension benefits, and instead of filling the vacancies condense letter delivery to 5 days/week with packages 6/week. CCA's (*City Carrier Assistant, a position that is similar to a substitute teacher, but for mail carriers) should do the 6th day delivery.
Make the mail carriers wage a true salary and develop street standards. As it is now, mail carriers are paid hourly, but guaranteed 8 hours a day. On light mail days, carriers still get paid for 8 hours, but anything over 8 hours is either payed as overtime, or the rest of the route is handed off to a CCA. What makes this worse is that there are no "street standards," meaning that a carrier can take as long as they want for a route and supervisors have no ability to reprimand or discipline. Anyone who's a postal emoyee knows this system is INCREDIBLY abused! Mail carriers should be salaried, and if any of their route is handed off to a CCA, the CCA'S wage should be deducted from the carriers salary. This would end the rampant abuse of the system.
Reform the training system! All carriers start out as CCA's, they become a Regular Letter Carrier only after someone retires and their route opens up. CCA's soon find out they are the regular carriers bitch and many don't last over a year. Training a new CCA costs about 10k. Listing all the problems with their model of hiring and training would take more time than either you or I have, but the simple solution would be having it all be on the job training in the office of the persons employment.
There are so many other changes that should be made but these are the biggest.
I love what I do and I believe that the Post Office is one of the last great American blue collar jobs.
One last thing that we all should appreciate is that the mail is the last true form of private communication. This should be appreciated now, and even more so in the future as privacy becomes increasingly rare. I wouldn't want the last from of private communication to be in the hands of Jeff Bezos.
Thanks for reading, if there are any other postal pedes here I'd love to hear from you!
President Trump doesn't understand that the postal services problems are enshrined in law.
The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 was passed during the year the USPS delivered the most parcels in history, and it has never recovered since.
This law forced the postal service to set aside the money needed to finance its estimated pension costs for the next 75 years from funds received between 2007 and 2016. What happened after? 300,000 employees fired and falling behind
Imagine if the law required you to set aside enough money to pay a thirty year loan in 9 years. Nobody would ever take out a mortgage again! Even worse? The Postal Service is the only organization in the country that has to do this. Exclusively. It is evil. Either this law was passed with bad research and data backing it up or it was intentionally created to destroy the USPS.
You wanna go one step even worse into this hell hole? ALL THE RETIREMENT FUNDS MUST BUY GOVERNMENT BONDS FUCKING ONLY!!! That's right pedes! No diversified portfolio representing the full and complete health of the investment market. No! That's too reasonable for a government law! Literally only Government bonds with their shit piss pathetic returns. What the hell do they think is going to happen when they have to start selling them to make the money back?! The bond market will collapse!
And would you like to know how much the postal service lost financing this between 2007 and 2016? The numbers are in. Take a guess. Maybe 5 billion? 10 billion? FUCKING NO!
54 BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. And their Inspector General reported they lost 62 billion total during that period. He laid the PAEA as the sole and direct reason the USPS is now currently fucked. Because of either good intentions powered by idiot research, or the intent to destroy the mail service so that the likes of Amazon, Fedex, and UPS could charge all of us ten times what we currently do for mail postage.
I know that most of us don't use the mail for postage very often. I'm sure we all have a sleeve of stampls waiting to be used for those 3 to 5 times a year we actually need to mail something. But guess who uses stamps and USPS labels for postage every day? EVERY FUCKING BUSINESS IN THIS COUNTRY!!!
So in short pedes. The USPS doesn't have a corruption problem with Amazon striking exlusivity deals THEY'RE TRYING TO FUCKING SURVIVE EVER SINCE AN IDIOT LAW SINGLED THEM OUT FOR FINANCIAL RUIN!
I'm sorry if I'm sounding ranty and if it's irritating any of my good and fellow pedes, but my aunt has worked for the postal service her entire life and any bad news for the service direcly affects her. I have voted mostly GOP my whole life but I am not blinded by party loyalty. THe 2006 law they passed was legalized warfare against a government organization that provides a public good. (And more cheaply than UPS or Fedex. I KNOW THIS TO BE FACT. I MAKE POSTAGE LABELS EVERY WEEK AT WORK. UPS IS 2-3 TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE PER OUNCE!!!).
In short, repeal the PAEA of 2006. It's fucking awful.
JMO, but The D is operating the way he also has, within the structure of rules that others have made, that he has to live in. Only he figures out how to use the rules to his advantage. The P.O. is a hugely wasteful corrupt organization.sSo let them continue to operate the way they have been, under the rules put in place by others, and dig their own grave. Reverse-Cloward Piven, they've created the chaos that's in their own system, that's going to eventually cause it to implode. GEotUS comes in and says here what's you have to do, if you want to continue to exist.
Don't forget REPUBLICANS put a poison pill in the post office a long time ago forcing them to have massive amounts of cash on hand to cover medical benefits.
Neither side is innocent in the corruption, remember this at all times.
I hate it when the post office delivers my stuff. Slow, wrong, poorly handled by comparison to UPS/FedEx and even the local donkeys Amazon hires to run packages.
I've been wondering how Amazon/Post Office can afford to send 6 different oversized packages to my house within 24 hours of ordering. I can wait 3 days for my coax cable and razors. Such a waste of packaging and processing.
I sense an automated parcel delivery service in the works. It would be much cheaper to just not pay a bunch of union employees. "More sanitary too" Now when the post office loses your mail, its because a hawk swooped down and grabbed the drone carrying your artisinal beef jerky.
The only explanation that makes sense is they are going for the Too Big To Fail justification for a government bailout. A $10 billion bailout every 10 years is the same as a $1 billion subsidy every year.
Forget about Amazon "not paying taxes", how about we just stop subsidizing them.
Oh, and if it's bigger than a business envelope literally anybody is better at delivering packages than the USPS. With all of the online shopping I've done, UPS, FedEx, and DHL haven't broken a single thing. The USPS literally impaled a 1000 page dictionary, broke a JB refrigerant pump to pieces, and left a HP network switch out in my steps in the rain instead of going the extra 5 feet to put it on the porch out of the rain.
it says right there in the article that amazon often delivers the packages pre-sorted to the PO for last mile delivery. Amazon shouldnt be paying for the whole amount because the PO isnt doing the whole job. The headline seems a little alarmist
I flew mail for the post office. It’s the most corrupt organization I’ve ever encountered. They would delay the mail so the second shift would have work. They would delay the mail so the majority of it would miss the flights (by majority I mean I’ve flown literally 1 box of crickets) They did this so they could send extra trucks. The brother of the postal service manager owned the trucking business. Seriously I love what the post office does but it needs a massssssssive overhaul.
I agree.
Plus the equipment is dated and their modernization is lacking.
Look at the post vehicles, far too small for current routes and not designed for today's modern package-heavy mail load.
We get 2-3 post vehicles in my housing allotment each day since they can't haul it all in 1.
How is it hard? You drive mailbox to mailbox and you don’t even have to mind traffic because you have the right of way. Ohhh I’m an idiot.
Chill nibba, damn lol
I typed it out and realized I was an idiot, but wasn’t going to waste the effort! Made it sound wrong at that! No regrats.
Yolo
Lol the people to blame are the ones at the top. Not the guy who literally works the entry level position and is telling you where money should have been spent.
Ehhh I used to bail 1700 bails of hay every day on average, many times quite a bit more, working the top of the elevator in the mile for five years. If you want to sit there and circle jerk about working. I’ve also had a job that I’ve walked 13 miles a day for a year. That was cake. But yeah, I’ve never done anything!
Government entities like the Post Office, MVA are real live examples of why socialism doesn’t work. The USPS has a monopoly and still manages to lose billions a year.
Corruption.
Corruption and just shit management. If they were allowed to fail to a certain degree, for example by losing market share, then they would maybe pull up their pants and get at least even, instead of losing all of our money.
I'd rather pay any other delivery company for a quick and reliable delivery than support that sloppy government cash blackhole
The post office has had competition in the past. That's why competition was outlawed.
I swear I’ve seen that happen with UPS surepost. My package moves steadily along via UPS and as soon as it hits my post office progress comes to a screeching halt. It can take 2 days for it to travel from my post office, that I could easily walk to, to my house.
UPS hires people with some ambition to do well, which is why they succeed so much.
USPS just bangs boxes around and kicks them to your door. When they have the time to do it between autofellatios.
To be fair, if i could perform autofellatio everything else would be a distant afterthought.
That's gay?
Same. For me the average is 3 days from it being delivered to the post office in my area to it being delivered to me. Makes no sense. I've had it take 5 days before. Absolutely no reason. I wish ups and FedEx would stop using SurePost.
Did someone mention the Union?
They need to gut their leadership and start afresh.
Trump should push some appointments.
What dumbass made that business agreement? Government (minus GEOTUS) is so damn retarded.
Swing a cat.
Excluding military, everyone in gummint is a dumbass. Start with that bias and you'll be right 99% of the time.
Having been around the military...we can include them a bit.
If we required officers to come from lower ranks it would change considerably.
Any organization gets big enough and it gets pretty dumb. Government, corporations, private companies, churches - the stupid is unstoppable at a certain scale. Life is tragic.
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
So it's like the difference between
the centipedes who support Trump and moved to .win
versus
the tarantulas/caterpillars who REEmain at the old subreddit instead of joining us here?
Lowest common denominator
Those who can, do. Those who cant, get a job in government.
Damn, I'm a teacher for the Govt. I really can't do anything.
This is cynical but I think it is correct.
It's actually even worse than when it started. The post office based the contract on much more volume than they are getting now. Since the contract went into effect the Amazon fulfillment center started sending trucks (Independents) with skids of orders early every morning to local rural post offices leaving the POs with the most expensive last mile. They forced Amazon to deliver their packages on sundays in the majority of cities. Then in big metropolitan areas like NYC they started up independent deliveries where drivers can deliver hundreds of packages on a single a block in Manhattan or with a small van with the same volume in a square mile in the outer boros. These deliveries to densly populated areas are gone from the PO. All that is left are the rural areas that are very expensive to go to eery day.
The corrupt fuck that got a huge suitcase of cash.
Desperation will lead to seemingly corrupt actions because that is all you have left when a law passed in 2006 forces you to finance your pension obligations for the next 75 years with the money coming in from 2007 to 2016.
Imagine if the law forced you to set aside enough money to pay a 30 year mortgage in 9 years. You would be wise to never take that mortgage.
I mostly vote GOP, but I am comfortable admitting this was all Dubya's fault and the corrupt idiot GOP Congress that paved the way to the most devastating loss in modern political history which begot us Obama and the Demoncrat super majority in both houses of congress.
I can acknowledge that the USPS will have its inefficiencies and things that need reformed, but that 2006 law singling them out for this financially ruinous requirement is the only reason we are talking about USPS and Amazon making deals.
Thanks Dubya.
Maybe someone who now has more houses than Bernie.
We pay the richest man in the world $1.46 for each item he sells. No wonder he is so wealthy.
Wait until you hear about Elon Musk ....
Yeah but $1.50 a package, how many packages has Amazon delivered through the USPS?
Are you one of those NASA SLS scammers?
And just think about how many mom & pop shops and retail giants that he has put out of business with this advantage!
IMO The real reason is the Post Office has been "Pre-sorting" the returning ballots in the Western "100% Mail-in Ballot" states.
(Wanders off to try to find the "finding ballots" stories. Some quite odd.)
Yes! 28 million missing since 2012 and in subsequent elections. Only way to pull that off without raising any eyebrows would be after the ballot has been returned. If the voter/recipient did not receive the ballot initially, they would request a new one to be sent. And as far as I know, there is only one organization that handles the ballots in transit.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_million_mail-in_ballots_went_missing_in_last_four_elections_143033.html
So why don't they charge a profitable price? This isn't brain surgery. The solution is quite clear & easy.
I think that is exactly what Trump is trying to force them to do.
Here is why... government idiots know taxpayers are funding it so they can.
Let me give you an example of why the private industry took so long to finally break out into Space travel, launching satellites and so on.
Before, it used to cost like 250+ million to launch a satellite. It sort of varied based on weight, but it was VERY expensive. Some private space companies started to build rockets and they were claiming they could do it for say, 150 million. What would happen is NASA would step in and say, "We'll launch it for your company for 145 million." Boom, the company would go to NASA, competitor would not be able to fund their rocket plans.
The problem is NASA was literally underbidding others at tens of millions of dollars of a loss to keep competition away. Wasting taxpayer money. NASA is not a lean company. Bloated salaries, expensive pensions. They are outrageously costly to run... always massive budget overages and projection delays. A big problem of NASA, even though I love them, is they are still government run and inefficient.
This is why a company like SpaceX only stood a chance because they had such a radical plan that NASA knew they couldn't underbid by 100-150 million, so when Elon Musk started saying they could launch satellites for 50 million dollars for companies, with their proven SpaceX rocket, and NASA's own embarrassment and problems with its delay after delay after delay of their new rocket, basically they finally had a chance to come around. I mean hell, SpaceX can launch 8 tons into Space at a cost to the company of about 90 million. That sounds like a lot, until you find out NASA was charging 300 million for the same thing, and probably still doing so at a financial loss, or a break-even.
But ya, NASA was literally keeping other companies out of competition for decades by underbidding any competition, even if at a loss.
The US Postal service is afraid of losing a lot of business to competitors, including Amazon's own delivery service so they are literally underbidding the cost, at a loss, to attempt to stay relevant. Government waste at its finest.
I used to work for NASA. It's far worse than anyone realizes. I considered writing a book about it but figured the lawsuits would spoil the fun. NASA used to be a capable agency back in the 50s & 60s, but that's when most people had a good work ethic paired with a patriotic sense of responsibility to do a good job. There are a lot of great people there now, but the freeloaders have ruined it.
Your explanation makes a lot of sense and is probably the most likely scenario
When I read it the first thing that crossed my mind was corruption - somebody high up in USPS is getting a kickback to sell to Amazon for a loss
250+ million pfffffttttt that would be cheap! ULA was charging 440 million for delta and 800 million for delta heavy. The shuttle cost a billion dollars a launch adjusted to inflation.
But NASA isn't purely at fault. Politicians, who were lobbied by boeing, ULA, and others, were holding NASA budgets hostage.
Some aspects aren't regulations they can just change, but "Written into law" bits.
Wouldn't want to overcharge the homeless for their shipping, or something.
Because with the waste of a government-run company, a profitable price would be so high that they'd have zero customers, literally. A profitable price is probably something like 10x what they charge now.
I certainly pay the price when I ship through USPS!
Free (taxpayer) Shipping
oh shit right? They get a bail out that is us paying for all that shipping. F that.
How else do you become rich these days—by fleecing Americans. Bezos is reportedly worth a cool trill now.
not to mention them using it to ship enough fentanyl into this country to kill every man, woman, and child
Seriously, I hate that 40% of Americans don't even know or see all the stuff he has done for us.
What I'm seeing is a government entity with a legally enforced monopoly on a public service. If they were a company they'd have gone out of buisness a long time ago.
They don't have a monopoly, ever heard of FedEx or UPS?
Ah, you're right, the monoply's on first-class mail, not packages. That'll learn me.
I actually had to look up first class mail... had always assumed it was a premium shipping service.
For envelopes, yeah, that's basically a monopoly. Re: small packages, I assume that's the aspect Amazon 8a abusing?
Amazon's sweetheart deal needs to go, pronto.
If that can't be done right away then an easy compromise would be to scale back mail delivery to 3 or maybe 4 times a week. Nobody is going to care that their junk mail and bills took a day or two longer to arrive since most of us went paperless years ago due to the increase in mail theft in many democrat run areas. The USPS kiosk machines at the post office can handle almost every request I see people waiting in line for and then asking about an employee for at the counter. Most of us with a printer, scissors and tape can take care of everything at home or at the office and just drop the outbound stuff into a mailbox or bin at the USPS.
I wanted to ship some wild rice halfway across the US. The packaged was fairly small and weighed like 2 lbs. They wanted $42. I go on Amazon and realized I could buy and ship 2lbs of wild rice to that address for $24.
Somethings not right.
Only way that could have happened is if you wanted it overnight. You could have shoved it in a medium flat rate box and paid like $16. And that's still one of the more expensive ways.
Does it mean they would be losing even more money without Amazon or is Amazon taking advantage?
Apparently, the Post Office is losing more money thanks to Amazon. But I can’t fault Amazon. Amazon is acting like any reasonable business owner would if they see something that is advantageous to them.
USPS needs to adapt and close the loophole.
Easy fix, raise cost of corporate shipping.
If Amazon doesn't like it, they can go to a competitor that isn't tax subsidized
The Post Office is important.
The Post Office has also been hugely corrupt for as long as anyone can remember.
Fire every executive.
The amount of money the do-nothing executives get, a huge waste.
Ban unions blackmailing it.
Of course, remove Amazon from their free ride.
Might be better, and a good time for it, to just close and restart.
USPS out, POUSA in.
It is important, and it isn't as much about the guy in Brooklyn getting his socks delivered, it is about those in farming areas getting their needed mail, it is about older citizens who rely on the mail being looked after, and it should be efficient and something that allows business to post all around the world at a good price.
I am a 6 year mail carrier and wanted to add my thoughts to the debate over the Post Office.
Many of the Post Office's financial problems can be blamed on the union and 3 steps could help return the Post Office to a strong financial position.
The pension system is strong but cash flow is poor. Let people with <7 years retire early, with slightly reduced pension benefits, and instead of filling the vacancies condense letter delivery to 5 days/week with packages 6/week. CCA's (*City Carrier Assistant, a position that is similar to a substitute teacher, but for mail carriers) should do the 6th day delivery.
Make the mail carriers wage a true salary and develop street standards. As it is now, mail carriers are paid hourly, but guaranteed 8 hours a day. On light mail days, carriers still get paid for 8 hours, but anything over 8 hours is either payed as overtime, or the rest of the route is handed off to a CCA. What makes this worse is that there are no "street standards," meaning that a carrier can take as long as they want for a route and supervisors have no ability to reprimand or discipline. Anyone who's a postal emoyee knows this system is INCREDIBLY abused! Mail carriers should be salaried, and if any of their route is handed off to a CCA, the CCA'S wage should be deducted from the carriers salary. This would end the rampant abuse of the system.
Reform the training system! All carriers start out as CCA's, they become a Regular Letter Carrier only after someone retires and their route opens up. CCA's soon find out they are the regular carriers bitch and many don't last over a year. Training a new CCA costs about 10k. Listing all the problems with their model of hiring and training would take more time than either you or I have, but the simple solution would be having it all be on the job training in the office of the persons employment.
There are so many other changes that should be made but these are the biggest.
I love what I do and I believe that the Post Office is one of the last great American blue collar jobs.
One last thing that we all should appreciate is that the mail is the last true form of private communication. This should be appreciated now, and even more so in the future as privacy becomes increasingly rare. I wouldn't want the last from of private communication to be in the hands of Jeff Bezos.
Thanks for reading, if there are any other postal pedes here I'd love to hear from you!
The biggest crime is the taxpayer funded pensions. Nobody who works for the post office deserves a pension taken out of my salary.
drain the postal swamp, full of corruption and kickbacks.
Never had a problem with FedEx or UPS, but leave it to the post office to fuck up the most basic of shipping instructions.
President Trump doesn't understand that the postal services problems are enshrined in law.
The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 was passed during the year the USPS delivered the most parcels in history, and it has never recovered since.
This law forced the postal service to set aside the money needed to finance its estimated pension costs for the next 75 years from funds received between 2007 and 2016. What happened after? 300,000 employees fired and falling behind
Imagine if the law required you to set aside enough money to pay a thirty year loan in 9 years. Nobody would ever take out a mortgage again! Even worse? The Postal Service is the only organization in the country that has to do this. Exclusively. It is evil. Either this law was passed with bad research and data backing it up or it was intentionally created to destroy the USPS.
You wanna go one step even worse into this hell hole? ALL THE RETIREMENT FUNDS MUST BUY GOVERNMENT BONDS FUCKING ONLY!!! That's right pedes! No diversified portfolio representing the full and complete health of the investment market. No! That's too reasonable for a government law! Literally only Government bonds with their shit piss pathetic returns. What the hell do they think is going to happen when they have to start selling them to make the money back?! The bond market will collapse!
And would you like to know how much the postal service lost financing this between 2007 and 2016? The numbers are in. Take a guess. Maybe 5 billion? 10 billion? FUCKING NO!
54 BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. And their Inspector General reported they lost 62 billion total during that period. He laid the PAEA as the sole and direct reason the USPS is now currently fucked. Because of either good intentions powered by idiot research, or the intent to destroy the mail service so that the likes of Amazon, Fedex, and UPS could charge all of us ten times what we currently do for mail postage.
I know that most of us don't use the mail for postage very often. I'm sure we all have a sleeve of stampls waiting to be used for those 3 to 5 times a year we actually need to mail something. But guess who uses stamps and USPS labels for postage every day? EVERY FUCKING BUSINESS IN THIS COUNTRY!!!
So in short pedes. The USPS doesn't have a corruption problem with Amazon striking exlusivity deals THEY'RE TRYING TO FUCKING SURVIVE EVER SINCE AN IDIOT LAW SINGLED THEM OUT FOR FINANCIAL RUIN!
I'm sorry if I'm sounding ranty and if it's irritating any of my good and fellow pedes, but my aunt has worked for the postal service her entire life and any bad news for the service direcly affects her. I have voted mostly GOP my whole life but I am not blinded by party loyalty. THe 2006 law they passed was legalized warfare against a government organization that provides a public good. (And more cheaply than UPS or Fedex. I KNOW THIS TO BE FACT. I MAKE POSTAGE LABELS EVERY WEEK AT WORK. UPS IS 2-3 TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE PER OUNCE!!!).
In short, repeal the PAEA of 2006. It's fucking awful.
He's not wrong.
Maybe it would also help if we could stop paying for china's shipping.
Right. Great point. How is it even possible to buy something off Alibaba and only pay .99 in shipping or maybe none!
I can't mail something to my neighbor for 99 cents. But China can ship something around the world. Someone is picking up the tab. It's us.
Stop delivering packages for them and see how fast they get their drone delivery or whatever up to speed.
JMO, but The D is operating the way he also has, within the structure of rules that others have made, that he has to live in. Only he figures out how to use the rules to his advantage. The P.O. is a hugely wasteful corrupt organization.sSo let them continue to operate the way they have been, under the rules put in place by others, and dig their own grave. Reverse-Cloward Piven, they've created the chaos that's in their own system, that's going to eventually cause it to implode. GEotUS comes in and says here what's you have to do, if you want to continue to exist.
#Mailforall
THAT IS YOUR ANSWER
Don't forget REPUBLICANS put a poison pill in the post office a long time ago forcing them to have massive amounts of cash on hand to cover medical benefits.
Neither side is innocent in the corruption, remember this at all times.
USPS sucks at it too.
I hate it when the post office delivers my stuff. Slow, wrong, poorly handled by comparison to UPS/FedEx and even the local donkeys Amazon hires to run packages.
I've been wondering how Amazon/Post Office can afford to send 6 different oversized packages to my house within 24 hours of ordering. I can wait 3 days for my coax cable and razors. Such a waste of packaging and processing.
I sense an automated parcel delivery service in the works. It would be much cheaper to just not pay a bunch of union employees. "More sanitary too" Now when the post office loses your mail, its because a hawk swooped down and grabbed the drone carrying your artisinal beef jerky.
I get pissed every time Ups or fed ex hands my packages off to the post office. My mailbox is two blocks away from my house.
The only explanation that makes sense is they are going for the Too Big To Fail justification for a government bailout. A $10 billion bailout every 10 years is the same as a $1 billion subsidy every year.
Forget about Amazon "not paying taxes", how about we just stop subsidizing them.
Oh, and if it's bigger than a business envelope literally anybody is better at delivering packages than the USPS. With all of the online shopping I've done, UPS, FedEx, and DHL haven't broken a single thing. The USPS literally impaled a 1000 page dictionary, broke a JB refrigerant pump to pieces, and left a HP network switch out in my steps in the rain instead of going the extra 5 feet to put it on the porch out of the rain.
it says right there in the article that amazon often delivers the packages pre-sorted to the PO for last mile delivery. Amazon shouldnt be paying for the whole amount because the PO isnt doing the whole job. The headline seems a little alarmist
Different circumstances require different reactions. Currently right now in present time, its alarmist.
Yes the USPS is being managed terribly. The article is still spreading false information and leaving out many details.
Been say This for a while....Amazon quietly hijacked the USPS and we should walk away from Amazon.
This is not an accident nor is it an accident that they own WP among other channels.
Why do you need Amazon?? - that is the real question...
The usps is email for morons let it fail