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Should door to door mail delivery end?

What do you think of the new Post Office proposal?

  • Total voters
    51
  • Poll closed .

Doesn't take long:

The Post Office IS Subsidized | Stossel's Take Blog | Stossel | Fox Business

From November 2012:


U.S. Postal Service back for record $14 billion subsidy - Tampa Bay Tampa Top News | Examiner.com
 

That's true. Private carriers can't do it for so low a price. Neither can the USPS.
 

Its not soley funded by fees. If you look at their financials they get billions in capital support.

Financials
 
MaggieD said:
That's true. Private carriers can't do it for so low a price. Neither can the USPS.
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And yet, they do.

PS - No interest loans, tax exclusions and govt monopolies are technically not "subsidies". However, they certainly are govt interventions in the marketplace that benefit the USPS by giving it a competitive advantage over private carriers. But there's a reason why the govt does this - the USPS provides a public benefit.

If left in the hands of the private sector, big businesses would be able to negotiate discounts and the USPS would have to increase the price of first class mail to compensate which would increase costs for consumers and small business. Mail service is sort of like a public utility in the way that roads and electrical service (amongst other things) are. We all benefit from its' existence.

However, that doesn't mean that the service can't be improved. Whether or not door-to-door delivery is a necessity, or even a good thing, is debatable.
 

Its funny, because we do have trash bins right next to our apt complex mail boxes. And theyre always full. Thats a lot of wasted time, money, and trees.
 
They could adopt the technology that John Doerr says they rejected in a startup he had funded years ago that would save the taxpayers a lot of money. Why did they reject the technology? Because the bureaucrats found out it would cost many of them their jobs. Also, I bet there are many fidos against the plan of action.
 

The USA bailed out the banks to help the .1%. The USA overthrew a democratically elected scumbag in Ukraine to help Corporations, Bankers and the Military and spent $5 billion doing it, the USA spent billions of dollars to overthrow Libya, billions to support al Qeda in Syria, and they can't find a dollar to help the USPS. The USPS is a service to all local people. Keyword-people, citizens, the 99%. Relativity, don't you think? The priorities of our USA Gov't are in the sewer. Screw the 1%.
 
If mail is stopped how would people receive their bills and pay them afterwards?
 
MaggieD said:
It is illegal for UPS and Fed Ex to handle first-class mail.

And unless and until the post office is no longer subsidized, private enterprise is hog-tied.
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can't agree with this, maggie
i remember when only the USPS delivered packages
then UPS and fedX got in the package delivery business and flourished despite the postal service's inherent advantages
 

I think they are seriously considering it - I am guessing it will depend on it's implementation and some seniors may still get at home delivery but probably not 6 days a week if this goes through. I think it's a solid plan actually and have privately talked about it for in the past few years with friends and family on rare occasion.
 

The way I understand it it's worse than that - Congress requires the USPS to pay back millions every year unlike a majority of other government run organizations. However, I can see the need to cut down on expenses and from a corporate perspective, instead of daily delivery a communal delivery systems seems more practical.
 

Hate that plan. There is a conspiracy to kill off and privatize the post office.* Due to new technology it may be necessary to scale it back a bit, but it is still needed. The commercial delivery services will never be willing to take the losses required to serve rural customers where the mail is a lifeline.

*:"The Post Office’s problems are the same today as they were back in September: the long-term secular decline of postal mail, on the one hand, combined with all manner of Congressionally-mandated restrictions which make a bad situation much, much worse. And now the inevitable has happened: we’re going to have a $5.5 billion default.

A default of that magnitude sounds scarier than it actually is. Congress requires the Post Office to make inordinately huge pension-plan payments, for reasons which nobody can really understand. But in the final analysis, USPS pensions are a government obligation, and it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference whether they come out of a well-funded pension plan, a badly-funded pension plan, or just out of US government revenues.

What does make a lot of difference is the degree to which the Post Office is hamstrung by Congress. There’s still room for the Postal Service to reorient itself and become a successful 21st-century utility — but there’s no way that’s going to happen if it’s constantly on the back foot and if Congress prevents it from entering new businesses, possibly including banking.

To put it another way: the Post Office is broken, in large part thanks to unhelpful meddling by Congress. And it won’t get fixed unless and until Congress gets out of the way and stops forcing it into the corporate equivalent of ketosis, essentially consuming its own flesh in order to survive....

How Congress is killing the Post Office
By Felix Salmon
July 20, 2012
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/07/20/how-congress-is-killing-the-post-office/
 
".......Approximately 88 million people in the United States, or 28 percent of the population, have no bank account at all, or do have a bank account, but primarily rely on check-cashing storefronts, payday lenders, title lenders, or even pawnshops to meet their financial needs. And these lenders charge much more for their services than traditional banks. The average annual income for an “unbanked” family is $25,500, and about 10 percent of that income, or $2,412, goes to fees and interest for gaining access to credit or other financial services.

But a possible solution has appeared, in the unlikely guise of the United States Postal Service. The unwieldy institution, which has essentially been self-funded since 1971, and has maxed out its $15 billion line of credit from the federal government, is in financial straits itself. But what it does have is infrastructure, with a post office in most ZIP codes, and a relationship with residents in every kind of neighborhood, from richest to poorest.

Last week, the office of the U.S.P.S. inspector general released a white paper noting the “huge market” represented by the population that is underserved by traditional banks, and proposing that the post office get into the business of providing financial services to “those whose needs are not being met.” (I wrote a paper years ago suggesting just such an idea.) Postal banking has a powerful advocate in Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has publicly supported the plan.

The U.S.P.S. — which already handles money orders for customers — envisions offering reloadable prepaid debit cards, mobile transactions, domestic and international money transfers, a Bitcoin exchange, and most significantly, small loans. It could offer credit at lower rates than fringe lenders do by taking advantage of economies of scale.

The post office has branches in many low-income neighborhoods that have long been deserted by commercial banks. And people at every level of society have a certain familiarity and comfort in the post office that they do not have in more formal banking institutions — a problem that, as a 2011 study by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation demonstrated, can keep the poor from using even the banks that are willing to offer them services...."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/opinion/the-post-office-banks-on-the-poor.html?_r=0
 
"....Warren’s postal banking proposal. “If the Postal Service offered basic banking services—nothing fancy, just basic bill paying, check cashing and small-dollar loans—then it could provide affordable financial services for underserved families, and, at the same time, shore up its own financial footing,” says the senator from Massachusetts.

She’s right. It really is possible to do two good things at once: address the abuse of the working poor by payday-loan and check-cashing outfits while expanding the range of services provided by the USPS. Media outlets have called Warren’s proposal “radical.” That’s ludicrous. She’s simply using her position and prominence to highlight the findings of a new study by the Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General, which notes that roughly 68 million Americans are underserved by the private banking system. “With post offices and postal workers already on the ground,” says Warren, “USPS could partner with banks to make a critical difference for millions of Americans who don’t have basic banking services because there are almost no banks or bank branches in their neighborhoods.”

This is not a new idea. From 1911 to 1967, the Postal Service maintained its own banking system, allowing citizens to open small savings accounts at local post offices—actually a better approach than “partnering” with banks. The system was so successful that after World War II, it had a balance of $3 billion, roughly $30 billion in today’s dollars. Congress did away with postal banking in the 1960s, but post offices in other countries—including Japan, Germany, China and South Korea—provide banking services. Japan Post Bank is consistently ranked as one of the world’s largest financial institutions based on assets...."
Why We Need a Bank at the Post Office | The Nation
 
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing mail delivery of all kinds ended right now and everything be sent via e-mail. The only thing keeping the USPS afloat today is junk mail. If I need a package sent, I will go with FedEx or UPS. The number of things I receive in the mail that I care about per year, I can probably count on ten fingers. The day of the post office is over. Let them die.
 

Or you can send an e-mail and she can have it in seconds. Screw the Post Office.
 
clownboy said:
No. The bulk mail is the sole reason why the PO isn't a total write off financially.
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But one of the reasons they're having problems is that they've spent so much time catering to bulk mailers, cutting costs to ridiculous lows, and now it costs them a ton of money to carry essentially crap to people's houses. If bulk mailers had to pay the same rates as everyone else, mail carriers wouldn't even have to stop at most houses every day.
 
Mason66 said:
If mail is stopped how would people receive their bills and pay them afterwards?
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We receive 100% of our bills via e-mail and pay 100% of them online.
 

USPS isnt a priority either.
 

How does it save the govt (meaning taxpayers) money? I thought that the USP was completely supported by it's own income (stamps, sales, etc)?

(I voted yes and I'm about 25 minutes from my PO. If people could specify another hub for their mail, like a private one, that would be better).
 
Cephus said:
We receive 100% of our bills via e-mail and pay 100% of them online.
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Well that is great for you but it is presumptuous to think everybody in the country does the same thing.

I want a hard copy of the bill and payment. I don't trust electronic files as they are easily lost.
 
jonny5 said:
Does it matter? Thats between them and whoever they owe.
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You are right and they do it with a bill being delivered to their door and then sending a check through the mail.
 
Mason66 said:
Well that is great for you but it is presumptuous to think everybody in the country does the same thing.

I want a hard copy of the bill and payment. I don't trust electronic files as they are easily lost.
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Print whatever you want.
 
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