U.S. Postal Service: salvageable or doomed?

all those people in the middle of nowhere are just getting books sent in the mail that teach them how to build bombs to blow up post offices anyway.

I do think its kind of terrifying to start measuring these sorts of things per economic viability tho - its a sad insight into the creepy economic mental sludge that is going on across the board in politics these days, and makes it even clearer that the neocons have won even while losing.

do you even know what the word neocon means

mail service is a constitutional issue. if you live in the middle of nowhere you still get, like, due process. sending off a letter is the same deal. so what if it's expensive!

all those people in the middle of nowhere are just getting books sent in the mail that teach them how to build bombs to blow up post offices anyway.

Get govmt out of my Medicare!

yes you insufferable little dude xxpost

nah the congress has the *ability* to create a postal service, not a requirement

http://gaffngun.com/forums/images/smilies/avatar54063_2.gif

l-r: ilx threads that even obliquely involve rural vs urban, iatee

The internets are making everything else privatizable, it seems

iatee just curious b/c I have not paid attention to this kind of shitstirring before -- have u lived in a rural area?

is there anything in section 8 that congress "shall have the power to" do, that it doesn't?

iatee, you realize that that's the whole point, that there's a minority of people who wouldn't be able to get service in the free market, but who need it, and whose services, in turn, we need.

Anyway "1% of Americans" is kind of a dumb stat to cite. It's more like 3+% of the labor force.

no I considered moving to one but then I remembered I was not a farmer xp

If the real point is to kill the unions and prove 'they don't work', the Republicans could just mandate that UPS and FedEx, etc..., serve rural areas which they could argue is a justifiable use of the commerce clause and totally wouldn't make them look like Mammon-worshipping hypocrites.

iatee what about all the people that need to live in rural areas to serve those farmers - grain silo storage/operators, farm implement sellers, harvest season laborers, grocery stores, etc etc?

the post office is kinda crazy for sending letters thousands of miles for, like, 50 cents. who does that? crazy people, that's who.

the post office is kinda crazy for sending letters thousands of miles for, like, 50 cents. who does that? crazy people, that's who.

^

p simplistic view of what the post office does imo

tbh guys theres plenty of decent stuff to talk about here and i know its hard to resist but this is kind of a do not feed the iatee sorta situation

They could just order their John Deere combines off of Amazon. Except nobody would deliver them. RIP farmers.

Yeah, who has ever heard of things like "economies of scale," am I right?

anyway outside of the rural/urban stuff this is what the post office does in 2k12

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-BP551A_JUNKM_D_20111005205703.jpg

the post office is bad for the environment and other living things! that's what you're trying to say. i buy that. so many tons of junk paper.

So instead of banning bulk rate/junk mail, let's def. eliminate the post office instead.

a) the rights that inhere to you as a citizen of the US and b) the sovereignty the US government holds over the country are both irrespective of the physical geography of the continent. each person and each square inch of US space is formally the same. if this makes the mail expensive in some places relative to others, that's a lesser concern.

both of those things are somewhat fictive (or abstract, if you like) but so what? i mean shit if health care is going to follow the same logic as rights/access then shuffling paper around the country in some useful, regularized way is nbd frankly.

you can argue that in the 18th cent the intent of the clause in Section 8 is idealized, it's about the state fostering the movement of information and correspondence and not about paper per se, but we're not borg yet so let's just pay for it, jesus.

if you banned them the post office would be even more fucked! xp

Less concerned by actual number of farmers than the idea of telling millions of people that they need to cut all their social/family connections and pack it up for Queens.

All indications are that Americans will continue to naturally urbanize in the coming generations, we don't need draconian bullshit like purposely making life outside of major metropolitan areas more difficult.

I have to admit I wouldn't miss getting mail from every Orthodox Jewish institution in my neighborhood (of which there are many) bcz someone put every plausibly non-Gentile name from my building's directory on their lists. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph....

Kept getting notices from The Nation when I subscribed that the bulk mail subsidy for periodicals had also vanished or nearly so, yes?

I'm pretty sure the post office isn't fucked becauase ppl like me are in charge it is fucked because people don't really use mail that much and, without a doubt, that trend is only going to continue

Less concerned by actual number of farmers than the idea of telling millions of people that they need to cut all their social/family connections and pack it up for Queens.

and they can't even send a return address because there's no Post Office! Yikes!

the junk mail thing is a non starter because the post office is not responsible for the content of the mail you get though xposts

right but its fragile finances atm are built on 50%+ of the mail people get being pieces of paper they will immediately throw in the trash

you can tell all those benefits that postal workers get make them really happy because everyone who works at the post office is always soooooooooo happy. just a bunch of good time charlies. i say release them from their inhuman chains of misery.

post office people are cocks! i like mailmen, though. my great grandpa was a mailman, and almost everybody he worked w/ was a WWII vet. Except for the dudes who worked in the offices, and they were all gov't job placement hacks, and he hated them a lot.

Less concerned by actual number of farmers than the idea of telling millions of people that they need to cut all their social/family connections and pack it up for Queens.

I thought the mail was privatized in Queens.

http://www.officialpsds.com/images/thumbs/Doug-Heffernan-King-of-Queens-psd41765.png

reasons why the junk mail thing doesn't matter

1 - the recipient is not the customer/funder of that mail, so their demands and wishes have nothing to do with the financial situation of the post office
2 - basic economics say that the only reason for the sender to pay for that "junk mail" is that it actually has a higher return rate than the cost of mailing. so no matter what we call it, it works enough for it to be growing business for the post office, and our value judgements about it dont really matter

'basic economics' say that it doesn't cost 50 cents to send a piece of paper anywhere in america

you are amazing

you really think that billions of dollars of subsidies to send paper trash around the country is a good thing because of 'basic economics'

How much does it cost? xxp

do you really think that you can get away with this level of hilariously misapplied argumentation xpost

http://i.imgur.com/7WenP.gif

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_t5Xqp0AYeg4/S8yJXKVoO5I/AAAAAAAAAPs/pYPHjEyGBNo/s1600/mail+truck.gif

reasons why the junk mail thing doesn't matter

1 - the recipient is not the customer/funder of that mail, so their demands and wishes have nothing to do with the financial situation of the post office
2 - basic economics say that the only reason for the sender to pay for that "junk mail" is that it actually has a higher return rate than the cost of mailing. so no matter what we call it, it works enough for it to be growing business for the post office, and our value judgements about it dont really matter

I just want people to look at this post for a while, just look at it

everyone can learn some 'basic economics' if you just reread that post I think

well apparently you cant but yknow

There's a question on the table about how much it costs to send a piece of paper.

usps works the life out of people and those people can never leave because they will never find better money/benefits and its a vicious cycle and it kinda sucks unless you are a chill rural route carrier but mostly you sell them your soul for good healthcare.

I think you should write a textbook called 'basic economics' where you teach people how the government paying money to send trash around the country is just 'basic economics'

Don't make me use the gavel and call the previous question or w/e.

new NALC contract sux, I'll be voting no

What are the most onerous sticking points?

In other news, I just learned that the USPS has an extensive array of merch:

https://store.usps.com/store/gifts

I ordered this really nice Pete Seeger commemorative stamp poster:
https://www.usps.com/ecp/asset/images/580450-Z1.jpg

I forgot about USPS merch - I think "first day of issue" merch was once popular among stamp collectors. I collected them for a very brief time (like two years) when I was in grade school, and it was actually a really great way of learning geography and to a lesser extent history. I got this huge introductory pack of used stamps from around the world, and it was pretty amazing when you're completely unfamiliar with most of the world. (One I remember is a coin-like stamp from Burundi that has a rainbow-colored spiralgraph-like gumming on the back.) And even among U.S. stamps, it was bewildering to see all these historical figures I never heard of. To this day, I have no idea how to pronounce Dag Hammarskjöld, but I know who he is because I got his commemorative postage stamp.

Anyway, I don't think I've ever encountered a single stamp collector ever since I lost interest, and apparently there's a sad reason for that.

I inherited a stamp collection from my grandfather as a kid in the 60s and started collecting myself, it was fascinating! I remember letters mailed to my family in the US from Germany in the 1920s with bushels-full of stamps because they were worth so little, also commemorative US stamps and weird stamps in the 60s from places like Brunei and Abu Dhabi and wondering where those places were.

I still mail letters and use stamps, and still save one or two stamps from any booklet or sticker-pad I use, just out of habit, but stamp collecting has gone the way of first edition book collecting, which I was into for a while. Nothing is worth anything now and nobody cares anymore

Might I interest you in a mail carrier costume for your dog?
https://www.usps.com/ecp/asset/images/843201-L0.jpg
Or a mailbox plush?
https://www.usps.com/ecp/asset/images/843520-T0.jpg
Or this set of Dungeons and Dragons field books with art from the commemorative stamps?
https://www.usps.com/ecp/asset/images/485499-L0.jpg

I once bought a booklet full of double-printed postage stamps and thought I had hit the jackpot - not like an inverted Jenny jackpot (anyone understand that reference?) but surely it had to be a substantial amount. I put it in a collector's book, didn't touch it for many years, then did a search online: with inflation taken into consideration, I think the profit was like $20.

Cute merch! Re: contract, this site a carrier made lays out the main issues pretty well. https://www.nalcvotesno.com/

XP

Learned about that here:

https://frinkiac.com/video/S05E01/h55BE6BNrwNJlUkxCDEKjmm7mKc=.gif

thanks for that link Josh! some great xmas gift ideas there

Got my carefully, considerately packaged USPS Pete Seeger poster in the mail today, and ... the dorks sent the wrong poster. Because of course they did. They somehow sent me the D&D poster instead, so I had to send it back (on their dime, which I guess kinda means my dime).

I saw the D&D stamps last time I was at the post office and bought a sheet! so cool

my mom got me a sheet!

I peeked inside and it was I think all the stamps mounted on a poster. This:

https://www.usps.com/ecp/asset/images/485425-L0.jpg

Which is cool, just not what I ordered.

honestly that is a terrible poster, why would you only use like 5% of the poster space on the totally cool stamp images and waste the rest on a dull gold background?

Because it's *metallic* gold, like treasure!

lol true... but THIS is cool:

https://store.usps.com/store/product/dungeons-dragons-framed-stamps-S_485424

lol so you literally cannot order anything from there with an international billing address. even if the delivery address is in the US.

Hmm, that's frustrating but intriguing. Can one order American stamps if you live in, say, Australia? Can I buy Australian stamps here?

FWIW I found out recently that IRC (which can be redeemed for international postage) are no more, which made it trickier when I agreed to cover someone’s return postage after mailing them a book to sign. I had to buy a postage label online from Royal Mail but it had an expiration date that I couldn’t get around so the author had to sign it like immediately and post it the next day. Another alternative was to buy UK postage stamps but that appeared to be a real hassle to do (without resorting to purchasing a bunch of them in the UK and having them mailed to the U.S. which would have been fairly costly).

Can I just say, it's fun to complain, and sometimes justifiable, but for all its ups and downs the USPS is still a minor miracle and one of the few remaining points of American pride. Surely that means it's a current target for demolition/demonization, but man, for price and reach it can't be beat.