U.S. Postal Service: salvageable or doomed?

I mean assuming it's in the hands of the private sector. You can't just make the private sector "get rid of" a pricing scheme

yes he can, he lives in an urban apartment

well in that case sure, a bulk mail tax

that would make bulk mail profitable for the government and would likely reduce bulk mail to some extent, but by incorporating the former (gov't funding) in your solution, you'd virtually guarantee the existence of bulk mail in perpetuity.

hurting is talking about a theoretical world w/o government postage and now you have just brought government postage back into his theoretical world

you guys there are lots of ways to make the transportation of cheap physical crap more expensive

there are not very many good arguments against it if you plan on being around in 2050 or have kids

but won't somebody think of the pensioners who want their coupons?

leaving the junk mail thing out of this, that pre-funding thing in the OP is just staggering to me. that seems like basically transparent "we will destroy you" legislation and should be treated as such and 86ed, thus solving some/all of the problems for USPS.

yeah they might as well have required the postal service to guess the name of a magical imp in order to receive funding

i was being (partly) silly on here, but for real how far is hawaii from where i live? 6000 miles? 45 cents to send a letter there! that's planes and trucks and cars and i think on the one hand that its COOL but i also can't understand how you can keep doing that forever.

maybe its easier than i think. i mean if they are going there anyway to hawaii to deliver junk mail than it doesn't matter if my letter tags along.

Maybe the costs of short-distance mailing are so miniscule that they offset the costs of sending to Hawaii.

And if I'm not mistaken, you can even mail a letter to Guam for 44 cents.

Less for me because I'm still working through my first roll of Forever stamps.

leaving the junk mail thing out of this, that pre-funding thing in the OP is just staggering to me. that seems like basically transparent "we will destroy you" legislation and should be treated as such and 86ed, thus solving some/all of the problems for USPS.

this assumes that there is a political party that would shitcan such nonsense ... oh wait, we don't have that anymore in the age of Change We Can Believe In!

Maybe the costs of short-distance mailing are so miniscule that they offset the costs of sending to Hawaii.

This may be the case. If so, it's not a unique idea to the public sector either. Plenty of private businesses offset higher-cost/lower-margin items or services, or even money-losing items or services, with lower-cost/higher-margin ones. A private bulk mail service could very well make the determination that it makes more economic sense to offer "direct advertising in all 50 states!" and take a little loss on the hawaii/alaska mail to bring in the business.

weight of a letter = 3 grams

weight of an adult male = 80 kg

number of letters that add up to weight of scott seward = about 26,000

26,000 letters * 44 cents = $11,400

that's a lot more expensive than a plane ticket to hawaii

there are not very many good arguments against it if you plan on being around in 2050 or have kids

haha whoops a letter is 30 grams

$1400, actually about the same as a plane ticket to hawaii

i think iatee is arguing from ideology instead of economics

Letters don't need seats, meals, flight attendants, etc.

carry-ons, luggage, gates, blankets, pillows, air-masks, shall I go on?

They do get movies, oddly enough.

letters may occasionally add up to that much, but you don't have 26000 letters going to Hawaii on every flight
OTOH, as I understand it, a lot of mail piggybacks onto flights to Hawaii that are already heading there

Yep, as I suspected:

The speed of mail traveling between Guam and the states varies depending on size and time of year. Light, first-class items generally take less than a week to or from the mainland, but larger first-class or Priority items can take a week or two. Fourth-class mail, such as magazines, are transported by sea after reaching Hawaii. Most residents use post office boxes or private mail boxes, although residential delivery is becoming increasingly available. Incoming mail not from the Americas should be addressed to "Guam" instead of "USA" to avoid being routed the long way through the U.S. mainland and possibly charged a higher rate (especially from Asia).

and

Because Guam is also part of the U.S. Postal System (postal abbreviation: GU, ZIP code range: 96910–96932), mail to Guam from the U.S. mainland is considered domestic and no additional charges are required. Private shipping companies, such as FedEx, UPS, and DHL, however, have no obligation to and do not regard Guam as domestic.

you guys there are lots of ways to make the transportation of cheap physical crap more expensive

there are not very many good arguments against it if you plan on being around in 2050 or have kids

yeah, sure, i agree with you on an ideological, goal-oriented level. everyone here probably does. but the solution is not destroying the USPS, privatizing all mail delivery, making rural people pay a "fair rate", and taxing bulk mail. pragmatically speaking, that might reduce bulk mail volume somewhat, but would merely set up a system guaranteeing its perpetuation. and it could be accomplished without destroying the USPS.

sure

wait only 'sure'ing the last part, 'would set up a system guaranteeing its perpetuation' is nonsense

if the government got tax revenue from every pizza coupon and crate & barrel catalog sent, you can bet they'd do whatever they could to keep the paper flowing

that might be hyperbole. hmmm... let's just say that it would reduce their incentive to stop junk mail.

In a country where we can't even get a gas tax that even approaches the true cost of driving, and where people will pay Amazon.com $70 a year just to get free shipping on all their $15 DVD orders,I wish iatee great success running for office on his "make cheap crap more expensive to transport" platform. (Not to mention his glib dismissal of how far we are from a paperless/everything online society when I can't even get decent cable internet speeds or non-throttled 4G wireless data in a major city, let alone In Buttfuck, Montana.)

'cheap crap for all forever and always' platform is pretty hard to run against I agree, I do not think I will run for office

yeah, one or the other of the two major "cheap crap for all forever and always" parties has won almost every major american election in the last few decades

everyone is invited to the cheap crap for all forever and always party

the great gasby

Alls I'm saying is we're all fucked anyway so please do not take away my first class mail in the meantime. My Aunt Lottie has sent me a birthday card every year for 42 years and I kinda enjoy it.

Netflix will take over USPS. Subscription based model.

anyway countries that offer postal banking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_systems

france! germany! brazil! korea! japan! america until 1967!

it's not a super crazy idea

and we have a country filled w/ amazingly shitty banks

They should put banks in Waffle Houses since they only accept cash anyway.

Chik-fil-A was another good idea. After all, them and the post office are already shut down on Sundays.

Waffle House takes credit.

If I could get a Waffle House Visa, though, that would be the only card I ever used.

Big move on their part. I guess they figured out that keeping an ATM on the premises wasn't the wisest thing to do.

But the Waffle House atm only put out credit vouchers (or at least that's how it went here.)

Ours were the same skinny machines you see at the gas station and handed out twenties only.

is iatee gabbneb?

no gabbneb loved heartland america

he would always give people vacation tips

i haven't read enough of yr posts to get that joke sorry, not sure i'd noticed you until ppl above pointed there's this guy and he's got this schtick and i thought 'o hey, gabbneb'. but apparently gabbneb went beyond insider baseball centrist mystery pollster stuff to full on loathing and trolling, which doesn't settle it (if dude or you snapped a username change would make sense right?), and responding in the negative doesn't clear it up either (which begs the question why'd i bother to ask...). anyhow better luck next time you try to buy stamps or whatever the fuck happened.

there's this colin cowherd commercial where you just pay for yr postage and print it on yr computer or some shit maybe try that.

wait a minute.

JESUS CHRIST.

are you colin cowherd?