The United States Postal Service (USPS) is in a “death spiral” as it fears it will run out of cash by 2024. The postmaster general warned Tuesday that unless major changes are made to the model politicians set up to fail, the USPS will be unable to remain solvent.
The USPS has had dwindling revenue for years, even though they deliver to about 1 million new addresses each year. Most of the reason why is because private companies, such as UPS and FedEx are offering services the post office cannot. Competition in the marketplace will lower the costs, but public services can’t compete with private ones (because bureaucracy is expensive), and historically, are disasters waiting to happen.
The organization has stayed afloat largely by defaulting on $48 billion in mandated payments over the past several years, Megan Brennan, the Postmaster General said during a hearing called by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and its operations are further complicated by inflation-linked caps on price increases for key products, according to a report by the Washington Examiner. “Given the restraints imposed by law, no set of management actions is sufficient to offset the continuing decline in the use of mail,” said Brennan.
People are moving toward online statements and paperless options when possible, which is helping to make USPS obsolete. And politicians are already suggesting that the government, over $22 trillion in debt, should just throw money at USPS to force it to work rather than letting it fail so the void can be filled by private companies operating in a more free market.
Changing the 2006 law which requires the post office to pay in advance for retiree health benefits, rather than covering them as they come due, won’t fix the problem of fewer Americans choosing to use paper mail. And experts agree, it’s not going to solve the problem of USPS’s insolvency in the long run.
Well let’s see. When I order a package from south of me it goes right through town and north to a place 350 miles away. Then to 3 different places up north then back here. How could you lose money with that plan? But still they are faster than UPS or Fed Ex (the slowest possible).
And yet I truly wonder why this nation will positively FAIL!!!!
If you order a 1 dollar part from china with free shipping it is delivered here by USPS. How is that possible? I have ordered tons of small electronics parts from ebay that ship from china for 1-5 bux with free shipping. I got a radio from china once and it went bad and I sent it back. It cost half the price of the radio to send it back! 60 bucks to send it! And then they claimed they never recieved it grrrrr. Fookin zips.
But what abouts my mudder-inlaws SS check dat we be depended on?
Well if this new format wasn’t such a cluster fluck it would go through.
If you could figure out how to fill in a post correctly it would go through.
Years ago the usps said the same thing. Its still here, let it die like all things .gov!
Another unresearched bullshit story on SHTF.
Nothing to fear.
USPS has lost billions in the past, and will lose billions in the future. They have an endless supply of FED money available, just as your Entitlements, Farm and Corporate Subsidies, Free Ride College for Aliens, Foreign Aid, Social Suckootiety and Medicare.
Nothing to fear.
Sit back and enjoy the prosperity.
The culprit is the prefunding forced on the USPS in 2006. We offer universal service, and you can bet that that will go bye-bye with “Privatization”. And the prices for delivery will skyrocket. Put the blame where it is warranted, and count your blessings we’re still here.
Mail delivery is a Constitutional mandate. So get straightened out Post Office.
edit: I am wrong. After some searching, I guess that mail delivery is NOT a Constitutional mandate. It enables Post Roads and Post Offices, but doesn’t really say that the Feds are responsible to deliver the mail.
JRS,
Right! I have to go to the post office to get or Post my mail. No residence to residence delivery or pickup here.
relik, there are a couple of new posts for you on the farmer income thread. Alohahahaha 🙂
Gen,
Got it, thanks!
Buy stamps. If you run out of cash, some people will accept them as a form of bartering. They are lightweight. I prefer the rolls of stamps. I use a stamp dispenser which was for sale at our local post office. It is a little metal post box and fits nicely in a bag.
Forever stamps are nice. I enjoy picking out colorful stamps with seasonal designs. They can be used for their aesthetic value even if postal service stops and I’m sure that buying stamps helps to keep them afloat.
E-mail is not the same. There is nothing as intimate as receiving a hand written letter, almost nothing.
If the post office closed it would be a true loss. Going postal is really the only way to maintain a smidgen of privacy.
Yes, I know they have cameras and they photograph the mail and have x-ray machines to see inside an envelope or package; but I doubt they look inside every card for the $5 wrapped in aluminum.
.
H said, “Buy stamps. If you run out of cash, some people will accept them as a form of bartering.”
That works just fine, in the short term, and I appreciate you finding an alternative way of doing things.
In the long term, you have just told people to invest in Confederate money.
Sent two packages the other day. One to a family member in SF and the other to Denver. Sent on a Monday via Priority. Said both would arrive on Wednesday. SF one arrived on Saturday and the Denver one arrived the following Tuesday. So…for my $7.40 each I would rather send it UPS or FedEx going forward.
Some people claim that renouncing God is like a giant weight coming off their shoulders. I still believe in first cause, absolute morality, and the Nicene Crede — not in the religion of statism, although I may go through the motions on holidays.
It flatly don’t believe in the govt’s ability to protect my civil rights, nor to provide me with any goods, services, nor conveniences, nor in it’s ability to make markets, nor to fix the value of any form of currency. I know how people customarily behave but just feel unmoved by it, calmly.
Be resolute that no help is coming. The wealth of resources around you will come into focus, because you will find agency.
Hmmm, their top two expenses are labor and fuel.
I have an Outback with the new CV transmission, it gets 34 mpg, I also have a hybrid that gets 36 mpg.
I hear if you combine a hybrid design with a continuously variable transmission (CVT) you can push a car to 50mpg.
Has USPS even looked at a program to upgrade trucks?
No brainier in my book.
PTPO,
My 2002 VW golf diesel gets 50 MPG highway, and 42 or so city.
Manual transmission.
Credit the Democrat EPA to act like a monkey fu cking a football and make a mess of fuel economies.
Rellik,
If they’d design a local delivery truck with a hydraulic CVT hybrid drive with a computer controlled constant speed deisel, I’ll bet they could carry a load and still get 75 MPG
When run at a constant speed diesel runs very clean, especially if it runs on natural gas.
These people have no imagination.
diesel on natural gas?
They deliver a lot of Amazon packages 7 days a week for a very low price no other business or individual customers get. That is one reason they are going broke. They lose money on junk mail. Ban junk mail and let UPS,Fed Ex and other services take over the Post Office duties. they are a lot more efficient…..
The post office make roughly 500 mil or so in profit every years. The reason no profit is shown because we are forced to pre-contribute to retirement funds for 100 years, at 10 billions a year for the next 10 years starting in 2006. It seems to me that the government want a cash cow so they can raid. No other business pre-fund their retirement at that rate. For those that complain about USPS, they can ship with anybody they want. They won’t find a cheaper service. That said, UPS, Fedex, and other have used USPS as their last mile deliveries.
Will UPS and FedEx deliver a first class letter across the country for 55 cents? They don’t and they won’t or else they would be. Currently, these same private carriers sometimes have the USPS deliver their packages the last mile because the USPS has to charge less than they do. The USPS is actually very efficient (unless there are some bad employees in the way). And the USPS is stuck delivering to some places that the private carriers would rather avoid due to high costs / low revenues.
if you think that .gov fucked up the post office wait till they start medicare for all.
Pony Express.
was touched on, but not clear.
I remember some time ago about them dumping money into the retirement fund ahead of time… $$BILLIONS$$.
Now, do the recalculate every time someone dies? Bet not.
Or, ahum, is this another source of funds that they use for other purposes that has no accounting?
Bet yes.
The post office just jacked up the price of a stamp to .55 cents, the biggest raise in price in history. I hear the Forever stamps are good, well forever. How long will that last? The longest duration of a stamp price was .03 cents from 1932 to 1958. I believe the price will rise steadily to a dollar per stamp in a short time.
What other way can people communicate distances away? The internet you say, well that’s not private. TPTB want to spy on your every communication. The internet is basically a tracking device as it was meant to be all along.
dhimmi-rat jobs programs never die, they live on by virtue of your taxes
I used to work for the P.S. It is already privatized. It used to be called the Post office and around I believe 1985 it went to Postal Service. they changed the name if you noticed. Before they could not advertise and no they can as they privatized. They still have it under the umbrella of regulations is why it is suffering. They need to let it do what it needs to do being privatized.
Also, when I first started with the P.O. before it privatized, the employee would not have to pay S.S. taxes. After privatization it changed and the employee had to pay S.S. So that was a big problem they encountered too ….
Well the USPS has one service no one has and that is the daily delivery of millions of pieces of junk mail. The printers and mail houses that produce junk mail ( I work at one of them) depend on the USPS for that delivery. If the USPS went out of business it would be a nightmare for companies like this and for thier clients.
Postal myths: #2 The USPS isn’t part of the federal government
https://postalnews.com/blog/2015/05/09/postal-myths-2-the-usps-is-not-a-government-agency/
This post is missing some factual info. First, it should be noted that the post office did some banking back in the 20’s / 30’s, without a problem. Second, a large chunk of the current fiscal problems are due to constraints forced on it by Congress (prepay of retirement benefits, limits on what it can do and charge for, etc). So while the Postal Service isn’t perfect, it’s not so bad.
I think you also should look at the huge derivative issue with the largest 6 banks, and the related risk to the banking system. Getting the post office involved in banking would probably be a good thing.