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It's also worth noting that commercial services like FedEx would not be as affordable as they are without the USPS. For one, they often use the USPS themselves. For another, they're having to compete with the USPS, which curbs how much they can charge. In the absence of the postal service, you could expect to see dramatic cost increases, assuming they even continued to offer regular delivery to your area.
I think many people are also seriously underestimating the possible economic fallout of eliminating or privatizing the USPS. They're relied upon by people in rural/remote areas, not just for regular mail, but for medications, food, educational services, etc. They're heavily utilized by small business owners throughout the country, many of whom operate on a tight profit margin. Additionally, they're a stable employer paying living wage jobs nationwide, and those funds cycle back into local markets.
Location: In a perfect world winter does not exist
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ryanms3030
As long as USPS is doing the exclusive Sunday delivery for Amazon Prime they won't be going anywhere
I use to hear inside the PO that Amazon owns USPS. The post office will kow tow to Amazin forever. That Sunday deal created a schedule dilemma that too often resulted in a exhausted workforce. That one day just wrecks things. But you know Americans have to have that handy meat cleaver on a Sunday.
For several years I was getting very late mail deliveries, often after 5pm. Turned out that after my 'regular' carrier left, my route had NO carrier assigned to it, and was delivered by some random carrier of the day who delivered my route AFTER delivering their assigned route.
Most post offices have auxiliary routes like that.
Mail volume varies widely throughout the year and a fair amount during each week. If there were aux routes that had no permanent assigned carries, then what? Hire more carriers so each route has a dedicated carrier? More costs (then you'd be complaining about that). Hire part-timers? Then you're going to get poorer service. There will be high turnover, thus regular 'newbies' who are slow and make mistakes as they learn the job that they'll probably quit as soon as they can get a full-time job.
You can't have it all. Unless you want to pay more, you're going to have to accept the logistical threading of the manpower needle that the USPS accomplishes.
As someone who sells online (mostly eBay), postage costs make me fret. I have no retirement plan and I gotta pay for everyone else's retirement plan every time i ship something?
Are you going to deny someone a pension because YOU have no retirement plan??? If you sell online then maybe you're self employed, open up an IRA. USPS is usually less than UPS or FedEx, both of which are competitive price wise. UPS employees have a pension.
If you have a problem funding retirees benefits at the USPS complain to your congressperson about the mandate they have to fund them 75yr in advance, if it stopped maybe the rate would come down.
I don't pretend to understand how the usps works, but they did just lower the cost of stamps, so maybe they're on the upswing.
They did not actively lower the cost of stamps. A temporary increase expired.
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