Post office loses 15.9 billion for FY 2012

http://news.yahoo.com/post-office-r...RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAN1LXMEcHQDc2VjdGlvbnM-;_ylv=3

So how do we fix the post office? Personally I think they need to cut out Saturday and one other day of the week delivery. I could be persuaded in keeping daily service during the week but I think we have to get rid of saturday delivery. I also think we do need to close some post offices, we dont need a post office in some of the tiny towns where they are now. Its a waste of money.

I see you chose to ignore large swaths of the article dedicated to retiree health benefit pre-funding. You should research the PAEA.

We will all be waiting with bated breath for your report.

How about we stop building useless fucking aircraft carriers while keeping essential government services running?

And how about you just shut the fuck up?

Fixing the post office has little to do with reducing services and everything to do with the problem manufactured by Congress by forcing it to pre-fund benefits as a stupid answer to its surplus management question, which of course preceded a noticeable but not tragic drop in first class mail. Without that, it would still have the normal problems of a business model adapting to the internet, but it wouldn't be in crisis. The answer in the short term is for the House to pass the Senate's bill, ideally adding a rider where Darrell Issa gets fired out of a cannon in a pay-per-view fundraiser. Or shot at by a cannon, I'm flexible.

Either way, the problem is structural with the benefits question. Slashing services is just starve the beast by a different name, and I *like* inexpensive and effective mail delivery.

Fixing this might be a start.

A huge problem is also that we just dont mail as much as we used to, that reality also has to be addressed. We don't need 6 day a week mail and a post office in every town of 100 people.

I see.

brettmcd makes me want to shout every single ignorant, vulgar, sexist, racist, homophobic word I know, and then learn some new ones so that I can continue shouting them. I would then record that, burn a bunch of CDs, and mail those to everyone I know and anyone I don't know who wants a copy, free of charge, and make sure they are all delivered on Saturday by the USPS.

And then I would go utterly destroy something beautiful because brettmcd.

I think the people living in those 100 person towns would differ. I know you're exaggerating, but 100 person towns with post offices are really rare. I can't find the exact size distribution though.

I'm sorry I thought I lived in an America where people weren't treated as second class citizens just because choosing where they want to live. I guess thats the kind of dream you cant have in todays america

I didn't know that not having a post office right in every single town in america meant that those without one were 'second class citizens'.

See? See? SEE?????

I guess that maybe nex time you will think more carefully about dividing america for no reason other than than to maintain low tax rates for the rich

Considering I advocate higher tax rates on the rich by taxing capital gains at the normal tax rates, and elimination of the deductions they use to game the tax code I am not sure who you are talking to here.

Im talking to you because you clearly don't understand the causal relationship between the gop's intransigence over tax cuts and the giant holes in the "cost savings and efficiency" approach to encouraging the total destruction of american infrastructure. you would know this if you read the article you posted using critical thinking to assess the importance of different aspects of it.
substitute "wilfully misrepresent" for "don't understand" to taste. then cook at 425 for 4 hours, checking every thirty minutes to ensure the bullshit has a nice even crust.

Then go talk to someone who believes in the GOP approach to taxes, because again you certainly will not be talking to me.

If you believe in the same solution to the problems that they create in order to defend their shitty tax strategy, you are part of the problem. why did you keep repeating about waste and 100 person town myths when it's clear they aren't the problem, even in your own article? how does generating a deficit out of whole cloth in the post office through stupid legislation warrant cutting other aspects of it that have little or nothing to do with the structural bankruptcy?

Just throwing this out there: post offices in a town of 100 are useful. Post offices every 7 city blocks in the suburbs are not as useful. But this whole budget problem is an illusion anyways.

You accidentally used a couple of apostrophes

Seriously, though, how are people in rural towns supposed to, you know, mail shit if there's no post office? Not everything can be e-mailed just yet.

FUCK YOU

FUCK YOU

MOTHER FUCK TO THE YOU HOOOOOOO

The mail carrier will pick up mail when he delivers your mail you know. It is how many people who don't live near a post office now mail things.

You'd actually be shocked how many people use the physical post office for shit. I know I am, because there's one on my commute to work and it's always got three cars double parked in front of it during rush hour.

I don't pretend to know what the fuck they're doing in there since I only go there when a certified letter needs to go out. But people DO frequent them, even if we all do not.

Those are the people who can't pay the UPS premium.

We have this same bullshit dance around the post office in the UK, where it is lumbered with a whole range of onerous official duties - like dealing with confused old people's pensions and posting every e-bay sellers piles of useless tat - but is then expected to perform like a courier service that gets to pick and choose the business it takes on. There is much tutting and stern finger wagging and declarations that workers wages need to be slashed to improve efficiency because the post office, which is specifically designed not to work like a courier service, doesn't function like a courier service.

I shake my head every time before bashing it repeatedly into the desk.

According to the article that you linked, we "don't mail as much as we used to" by a factor of about 0.7% per year.

That is hardly a precipitous rate of decline that warrants the slashing of services that you advocate. Perhaps the "huge problem" lies elsewhere? (Hint: Lizard King already provided the answer. I know you won't address it, though, because you never, ever address sincere and polite counterpoints to your posts. This is why so few people here even bother to offer them any more).

Unless the USPS scope of service changes drastically, mail carriers aren't going to come to your house, weigh a package for you and sell you the postage for it. There was a brief period in the 80s or 90s when mail carriers were selling stamps out of their trucks, and it didn't last (probably because their union pointed out how dangerous it is for mail carriers to carry cash). Plus, where are mail carriers supposed to operate from? Will they get your sorted mail in the nearest big city and then fan out into the rural areas, some of which might be a pretty long drive? Think about sparsely populated states like Montana. That seems WAY less efficient than the current system.

They should offer an Express Abortion service.

Oh you guys want a profitable service for the post office?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_System

How about we bring that back, and then kill the FDIC subsidy to the banking industry so that they can go back to being part of the private sector rather than adjutants of the public sector.

Oh shit, but then banks would have to work for their money.

You get your ass handed to you by your own links in every single thread you make.

How do you feel about that?

1. Not always.
2. Not always reliably.
3. Not everywhere.
4. Not if you don't already have stamps.
5. Not packages that need to be weighed.
6. Not certified letters.
7. Not with delivery confirmation or any other special service.

Additionally, they won't even deliver certain types of mail to your house, instead delivering a postcard that asks you to kindly go to the nearest post office to pick it up. Which is why it's sometimes nice if that post office isn't sixty miles away. Is that level of niceness worth a bankrupt post office? No. But then again, it is also not causing a bankrupt post office.

I don't know. We're going to need more people driving longer distances if our highway system is ever going to turn a profit. Otherwise, we'll have no choice but to cut costs by terminating road services to less populated towns. There is literally no other possible solution.

I love the response to this thread. I don't believe I've ever seen Brett shut down so quickly, and so handily.

Inevitably, brett, when people start talking about closing post offices they really just mean post offices for poor people. What about the citizens of Pine Ridge who already travel 60-80 miles for their nearest post office, which was slated to close last year when they started talking about closing post offices (it didn't, in the end, so hooray)? People there (and other places) rely on post offices for everything from social security checks to veterans benefits to paying their bills, and they're often the only link they have to the outside world. Yes, there are still people in this country who don't have electricity, much less e-bill-pay. It's easy to sit in suburbia and suggest folks just drive one town over if they want to mail a package. A little different when it's already an 80 mile drive in the truck you borrowed from your cousin so you can pick up the check that means you won't starve for the next two weeks, and disingenuous motherfuckers want to close that post office down because it's just so expensive and nobody important uses it anyway.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

I miss the days when I actually got handwritten letters in the mail. My Dad used to write them to me when I first moved to Ottawa, but even he's discovered the wonders of email. Oh well, maybe I'll get a "Season's greetings, thanks for driving a Hyundai" card from the dealership next month.

Yeah. Letters are cool but I can't complain about not getting any when I also don't write any. These days I usually get the mail before I even go inside when I get home from work, so I can chuck most or all of it directly in the recycling bin. Seems wasteful for the people that send it to me but I guess that's not my problem.

I actually don't want to see Brett shut down. I'd like to see him engage in a real discussion for a change.

This is dumb. We should do what civilized countries do and establish a government debit card so that people can use their social security check etc without having to deal with a legacy system. It'd save a fortune on idiotic mailings and cut out the whole astonishingly rare "I drive eighty miles to the post office" business. Oh, and since we already do that with SNAP it'd be convenient to fold the SNAP card in with the benefits card.

http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/mobile/benefits/how-to-use-ebt-card.html

Utilities could send a person to houses without convenient (PO in twenty mile or less radius) mail or ebill payment options and swipe their gov't card to pay the utilities. That'd eliminate the bill aspect for whatever miniscule fraction of the popluation doesn't live sufficiently close to a post office. And packages are already delivered by private providers.

Top it off by tying a CCT scheme to the gov't debit card that rewards people for doing stuff to improve themselves or their kids. Now we're cooking with propane (and have virtually eliminated the post office as a relevant public utility).


edit: Wait wait wait sorry, I forgot that a gov't debit card without restrictions would let the poors make their own decisions about their money which is totally out of line with SNAP. Best put some ridiculous limits like only allowing them to buy grains except on the solstice.

And that government debit card will be delivered to them via magic fucking ponies. Brilliant, Aeon.

Brett, why do you hate America?