Tell me why. And even though the Postal Service is self funded and does not receive tax dollars? ...The excuse for the Issa bill is that the Postal Service has a huge operating deficit and can not make a $5.5 billion dollar payment to pre-fund its retirement accounts in November. The problem stems from a Republican law passed in 2006 that requires the Postal Service to pre-fund 75 years of retirement in a 10 year window. No governmental entity or private company is required to pre-fund future retirements that far out. The original reason for the pre-funding was for the federal government to get its hands on postal service money to hide the actual deficits Republicans were running in the civil service accounts. Republicans ran up huge deficits during the Bush years to fund wars and the Bush tax cuts... http://www.examiner.com/economic-po...s-moves-closer-to-privatizing-the-post-office I'm reminded of my earlier post to you in this very thread:
Nice, no mercy, no quarter, make them ALL put us on ignore. Make the ALL run away, like the cockroaches that they are.
Actually, I doubt it would be much different. They do the same thing with their flat rate shipping. They've all (including the USPS) discovered that it increases their costs to individually charge for each small parcel. So they've all implemented some sort of tiered system like the FedEx flat rate, or USPS priority envelopes. On the very small end you have 1 stamp for a standard letter up to about six pages, and it goes up from there a stamp at a time. If Fedex or UPS were to take it over, they would undoubtedly do the same thing. Some type of stamp system or standard envelope system. It would likely cost the same to ship a letter regardless of the location within the continental US, because that system is just more efficient. But it just makes sense to have the private companies that are dominating the parcel shipping market, because they've proved to be so much better at it, also handle smaller envelopes instead of bringing it under the government umbrella. The nice thing about UPS and FedEx is that they provide business ownership opportunities because drivers can own their routes and trucks. Simply better and more efficient service. When you order something online and the price includes shipping, do you choose the 5-10 day USPS option or the 1-5 day UPS option?
The logic behind merging the postal service into UPS and FedEx is actually quite simple and clear. Since 2006 first-class mail volume has been dropping like a rock. This trend will obviously continue as more people use other technology. This mail accounts for 80% of USPS revenue. Unfortunately, decreasing volume doesn't lead to linearly decreasing costs as variable costs are not a large portion of USPS costs. The trucks still drive the route whether it is one letter per box or ten. In order to cut costs, they lay off carriers and close locations. This does cut costs, but has a hugely detrimental impact to service quality. In contrast, package shipping has been on a really strong up trend as more people purchase online. USPS ships packages too, so why isn't that portion of their business thriving? They simply aren't as good at it as their private sector counterparts. They are slower and/or more expensive for most items. There is a strong suggestion here that if private companies are much more efficient at package delivery (including packages that aren't much different than a large envelope), they would also be more efficient at mail delivery.
If you are gonna make a claim like that, then you are gonna have to provide some evidence to support it. I'll provide evidence to the contrary. Given the scale of the operation and it's protected monopoly in the letter mail arena, USPS should be able to provide better and cheaper package shipping service than either UPS or FedEx. On the contrary, it falls behind both of them in terms of both pricing and service. Looks to me like UPS and FedEx are actually driving USPS package shipping rates lower. Not the other way around. How would mail shipping be different? The profit margins in shipping first-class mail are larger than packages.
I hate the USPS, or their union really. They will not stop junk mail for anybody. It would take jobs away from their workers. Whole forests are cut down and thrown away every year because of some bullshit irrational demands from some union bosses and members. See forestethics.com for details and to petition to stop it, see righttoworkcommittee.org about the Union problem..
BTW Brass, Are you suggesting that it is a bad idea for them to be required to pre-fund those retirement accounts? Those accounts keep growing quickly while at the same time volume (and subsequently revenue) is falling through the floor. It's nice that they are currently functioning off of tax dollars, but who do you think is on the hook for those retirement accounts when in less than 10 years the postage volume is less than 50% of what it was in 2006? I say get those accounts funding as quickly as possible because snail mail is about to go the way of the print newspaper.