Save The Post Office!!

2 things.

1. Government run in good faith by competent people results in good outcomes. Private organizations run by the same also result in good outcomes. Generally they are aimed at different purposes, but neither socialization nor privatization inherently makes something more lean/efficient/whatever, it depends on what you're trying to do and who's running the show, and they can work well in tandem on any given problem. Privatized healthcare is an absolute disaster, but properly regulated competitive private enterprise in consumer goods and services is a much better way to a healthy, thriving economy than a socialist system.

2. Postal Service is a public service, not a business. It's not supposed to be profitable, it's an investment we make for the common good.

P.S. Damn dude, did John Oliver piss in your cheerios or something? Get a grip.

Everything can be run with good intentions and can be done well.

No one runs anything with good intentions because that doesn't pay enough. They may start and/or say they will.

Greed ruins everything.

Post office just doesn't need to be what it is, and hasn't changed with the times. There doesn't need to be daily mail delivery. And there really doesn't need to be 20lbs of junk and coupons for every 1 letter. And mail carriers don't need to be the ones that bring that ***.

If you want your arbys coupons go pick them up at arbys.

1.) This is theoretical fantasy thinking. Government entities are NOT run in good faith and with the taxpayer's best interest in mind. It's almost impossible to fire a government employee for anything short of murder. I've worked on government app dev projects where the entire government workforce sleeps at their desks most of the day, and the contractors are all unqualified H1Bs placed there to do nothing and earn endless, enormous profit margins for bogus staffing firms that kick back under-the-table payouts to the hiring managers within whatever ***government agency they're working for. The business side of these agencies is no better. So what you end up with is hundreds of employees doing little to no work, and a horde of foreign labor that doesn't speak English, all charging taxpayers an enormous amount for poor or broken services.

No private business that I've ever worked for has put up with any amount of this type of ***. The guys at the top all want to make as much money for themselves as possible, so if people aren't performing, they're gone. If the company is public, then major shareholders are expecting performance, and the pressure gets applied from the top down so that departments perform or make changes.

We have a couple of examples of services that are provided by both the government and private business to look at here: USPS runs inefficiently and at a loss, whereas UPS and FedEX make enormous net profits. The VA only has to handle a maximum of 18.2 million vets, and they do an atrocious job of this and let a huge number of them die or commit suicide while waiting in a queue for help, whereas private practices, although definitely overpriced, have to handle the other 400 million (including likely illegal residents) people in the country. You can make all the arguments about private healthcare and insurance costs you want, but that's a separate issue.

Someone else mentioned private prisons. I'm not a proponent of privatizing EVERYTHING. There are certain things that should be kept public. Common sense tells me that private prisons are incentivized to keep people locked up longer than they should be to increase profit, which creates an obvious conflict of interest. But let's use common sense and not compare prisons to mail delivery.

2.) The common good, or what's in the best interest of the taxpayer, is to use taxpayer's money responsibly. The way the USPS is currently run is not in the taxpayer's best interest. There are changes that could be mandated to lean it out: make physical mailing of any advertising material illegal. It's already illegal for me to put a letter into my neighbor's mailbox without a stamp; surely they can ban mailing advertisements. Have mail delivered one day a week and reduce the mail carrier workforce by 80%. Any mail that's THAT time-sensitive can be sent first-class UPS or FedEx. Getting the USPS operating in such a way that it's not such a needless drain on taxpayers would be a reasonable course of action. What's not reasonable is to endlessly throw more taxpayer money at them as a reward for never improving upon their ***standards and practices. The taxpayers deserve better use of their money.

3.) john oliver didn't become a citizen until december 2019. He's a foreigner who's been squatting in the US, while talking ***about all the American values that he hates. He makes unreasonable false comparisons and desperate, pretentious, juvenile commentary about anything not approved by his propaganda masters on the left. He's a complete and utter scumbag, and only pretentious douchebags who sniff their own farts watch his unfunny routine.

Right, getting serious Alex Jones vibes here, but not like I'm surprised. In any case, it's not theoretical fantasy, you may have your experiences and you're entitled to your opinion, but I've seen public services work well, I've benefited from them, and I've worked on public dev projects that went well. I've also seen private companies run into the ground while they screwed all their employees over. I've also experienced the reverse of these situations. It really comes down to who's doing it and who's in charge.

I'm all for reforms and upgrades and such to government to make it better, we need it, but it's hard when one party actively sabotages government from within to fulfill their own prophecy about government not working. And privatization isn't some magic cure. If you seriously think private companies aren't rife with cronyism, inefficiency, and incompetent management, I have a bridge to sell you. Your simplistic idea of workplace performance dynamics is a fantasy.

Oh and as for UPS and FedEx, no thanks. Why would I want to pay a lot more money for not much better performance? A company being profitable is meaningless. The post office would not somehow be better if it made a profit, it would just be more expensive.

This is the response I expected, sadly.

1.) Compare to extremist you don't like;
2.) Muddle with non-specific statements about unspecified government entities and private businesses unrelated to the ones on-topic;
3.) Ignore real life examples provided and solutions suggested and move straight to pointing the finger at one political party that you don't like;
4.) Corporations bad government good.

ffs we're not talking about radio shack going under, we're comparing specific business that are run both privately and publicly to extremely different levels of success that affect extremely different numbers of people for completely different reasons. If you were invested in ENRON, then you were willingly gambling by playing the stock market. If you were an employee of ENRON, then you were willingly working there for a salary. If you're a taxpayer, then you're unwillingly funding broken ***. You personally benefiting from [insert unspecified public service] has nothing to do with the performance of the USPS. Put a little effort into your responses.

The feeling is mutual. Ignore anything I say that doesn't fit your extreme narrative and sweeping generalizations, and put words in my mouth. Carry on then.

I'm not sure where the disconnect is:

There is a reason most German soldiers were allowed to go about their lives after WWII, while various officers are being dragged out for execution 75 years later.

Reasonable people know the answer without using Google.

Reasonable people also know that living in a country and performing a job (paying taxes, etc.) isn't squatting.

Likewise, I can't remember the last time I sent something using USPS... If it were to vanish off the face of the earth I doubt it would affect me. All info that USPS has that could fall into the wrong hands is already in the hands of FedEx and UPS. In fact.. maybe a higher base rate for individual deliveries would discourage junk mail.

Maybe we don't get rid of USPS, we just jack up the cost of sending a coupon flyer to $2, and downsize the sorting and delivery departments accordingly.

save the post office, save the the disposable heroes working at white castle!!!! Where is the beef? I am a angry drunk that didn't get my letter today, an no jr bacon cheese burger forgive me!!

The Post Office should be shuttered as part of the Green New Deal. Burns gas to deliver. Nearly all delivery is paper products. The Post Office is bad for the environment. Why do I need a piece of paper for something an email could do better and faster?

The USPS is not funded with taxes.


Not everyone/everywhere has quality internet access. Also, until the government gives you an email address, there is no way to receive official notices that doesn't go through a private company. Small businesses rely on it for shipping because it's cheaper than the alternatives.

The USPS has been targeted by certain interests for a very long time, and that's why they have such insane financial burdens (like having to pre-fund pensions decades in advance).

The USPS is amazing, and its loss would make us all poorer. That's not to say it couldn't use some improvements, but this notion of shuttering it is either insane ignorance or a wild exercise in bad faith.

Everyone talking about how terrible the post office is has clearly never lived outside the US. It’s *** awful everywhere else.

There needs to be daily mail delivery. It is a necessity. Just because you dont need your mail daily doesnt mean others dont rely on making sure they get what they need when they need it.

Nothing comes via snail mail that is time sensitive to the day. Bills come a month early. Birthday cards, presents, flowers aren't time sensitive. Nothing is.

And I said they could keep overnight/2 day etc, if you can think of one.

If you got mail every monday, it'd still be totally fine. and they would save billions. (yes they would have to lay off people/hiring freeze/lower pay) Mail carriers make too much money for the importance of the job, objectively.

"if they only deliver once a week, the junk mail weight would be overwhelming" Stop delivering it. Go get your coupons in person.

And it doesn't have to be "once a week" "Mon Wed Fri" is more than sufficient too and still cuts 40% of cost.

Not by a long shot. Delivery is FAR from the only thing that the PO does or pays for.

You might be fine, but there are definitely people who rely on a more rapid cycle.


The purpose of the USPS is to provide a service to citizens, not to make money. The fact that it breaks even (or better) most of the time, despite the most draconian funding regulations imaginable, is a testament to how well they actually manage the money.


This is an opinion.


What exactly do you think subsidizes the cheap postage for everyone else?

There is literally nothing that needs to be received daily.

Our mail right now is every other day and it has absolutely zero effect on anything.

Name absolutely anything that MUST be received immediately. That can't be sent in advance. I send it to you today you MUST get it tomorrow. It can't possibly wait till the next day. and/or will die rot in less than 24 hours.

(besides live animals) Medicine can be sent overnight, which I already said. There is no piece of paper that needs to be received daily.

There is room between "what the post office is doing" and "completely closing" that are very reasonable options.

Sure. We just disagree on the scope of the needed changes, is all.

The thread is about a theoretical $75 BILLION bailout using tax dollars.

The government sucks at everything it does. It's incredibly bureaucratic and the policies practically force money to be wasted. Quickest way for a government manager to be black listed from all future promotions is to come in under budget. There is a reason "end of year spending" exists. Anything managed or run by the government is destined to be expensive, wasteful and managed by Dilbert-esque idiots (seniors actually aren't stupid, they are just really good at playing the game).

Now having said that, there are some functions that are fundamentally government functions. Central governments are responsible for internal and external security along with critical infrastructure services. Having private Military's or Police Forces is a recipe for disaster. Roads and Communications fall into that same category, handing them over completely to a private profit-driven organization is just asking for them to be abused. I'd argue that mail is a critical service that the government absolutely should have responsibility for (there are a few others).

That doesn't mean the government needs to run it directly, contracting it out would work also, provided the government were the ones with oversight and ultimate control. The US Military does this all the time, contract out specific functions to private companies with a Government Official providing oversight. Ultimately it's the governments responsibility to ensure the citizenry can travel and communicate with each other. Neither of these need to be extremely fast, private / toll roads exist along with specialized delivery services.

As for the USPS, Trump didn't approve or disapprove anything related to them. That's just more media spin. The Democrats wrote a wish list for 3 Trillion USD that creates things like a psuedo-UBI and all sorts of other pet projects from "The Squad". This bill has exactly 0% chance of passing the Senate and the Democrats know this. That bill was specifically created so that it could fail and the Democrats could blame President Trump during an election year in an attempt to get some sort of momentum going as Biden isn't looking that good right now. One of the items in their wish list is 25 billion USD for USPS.

Now I'm not against USPS at all, I believe they should be funded as a common service. I also know that it's going to be mismanaged and run horribly, that is the price for having a Government run service. I wish they Democrats wouldn't of tried to use USPS as a "human shield" in their political death match with Republicans.

I think this is the part people are missing. FedEx, UPS, DHL and the rest are run for profit and as such all their policies and procedures are geared towards that. USPS is run to provide a service to the community and so has very different policies and procedures.

Most of it's costs are indeed personal, but it needs those personal as it must ensure delivery of mail to all registered boxes, including ones that take an hour or more to get to. USPS also does mail hand off for the Military Postal System (MPS), which is how official mail gets delivered to Military bases and how mail gets delivered overseas to Army Post Office (Army / Air Force) and Fleet Post Office (Navy / Marines). Having served overseas I know that the only way to get packages delivered was for USPS through my APO address, neither UPS nor FedEx would delivery to those.

Oh give me a *** break. Democrats don't need to do anything of the sort to try to blame Trump for anything, he does it all himself. It's really not that complicated. They know it's not going to pass, but it's a starting offer, and whatever McConnell decides to do is out of their hands. They can negotiate to a compromise, as they have been doing, or he can ignore it and that's on him. But people are getting sick of half measures, so it's not surprising they'd roll something ambitious out like this. The left is sick of them being pussies and has been for a while. We already know the Republicans are going to try to cut out as much as they can, why do it for them?

As for "pet projects," a temporary psuedo-UBI specifically for the crisis is something that would actually help people get through it. My family lost all their income, and the only reason they're not in deeper ***is because of the expansion of unemployment eligibility rules, and the fact that my income actually went up, so I can help them. Aid to states is critical for vulnerable people in the short term.

I mean really, who's having a political "death match" here? I'm not a huge fan of the Democrats as they currently exist, but the Republicans and much of the Right in general has gone off the reservation.

Saevel is going to take a shot at the Dems anytime he gets the opportunity. Your analysis is spot on, the House bill is a starting offer. The GOP is saying "Sorry America, wait until the summer for more help." The House bill puts pressure on them to work on a counter offer now, instead of doing nothing for 3 weeks.

The Post Office is gonna get funding, we don't need a petition, its gonna happen.

So your response is:
1) Orange man bad;
2) Rant about how much you hate republicans;
3) Personal rant about how your family lost their jobs.

How about your family take some personal responsibility and save for a rainy day?

Back on topic: Instead of defending dems by saying they're being "ambitious" (very cringe-worthy assessment), why don't you get mad at them for not proposing a standalone bill that only covers USPS funding? If they were serious about "saving the USPS," then they'd put forth a bill that could be negotiated entirely on its own merits (since you insist that their proposal is supposed to be a reasonable starting point that can be negotiated). They intentionally don't do that because they don't give a ***about the USPS. They WANT their bill to get rejected so they can point fingers at their political opposition and get people revved up and hating each other more. You're their target audience and you've taken the bait and been emotionally manipulated (again).

Basically everything coming out of the GOP is cringy...

There are businesses and government functions that rely on daily mail service. Communications, by definition, are time sensitive.

Indigent inmates in jails and prisons use USPS at tax payer's expense for required legal correspondence. The average is two business sized envelopes with four pieces of legal sized paper and two postage per week per inmate. $1.10 per week plus supplies.

Some of those correspondences are time sensitive as they have to do with current criminal cases.

Oklahoma agencies rely upon USPS to mail original copies of protection orders to other agencies that require service (i.e. the petitioner is in my county, respondent lives in another county, sheriff's office is the agency of service that it needs to be mailed to). By state law the respondent is required to receive the original notarized copy and this is time sensitive as well as the respondent must be afforded time to obtain an attorney prior to the set court date. I'd hazard a guess that Oklahoma isn't the only state that has this law or something similar. Average cost for mailing that is $0.80 anywhere in the state, pretty sure that's also the same rate if they have to be mail out of state as well, but I can't confirm that.

Both the time sensitive and lack of using tax payer's money arguments for privatizing the USPS are invalid. Too many government agencies rely too heavily upon USPS for various facets of mail delivery.

Easily solved with email and fax. And you can't say they don't have those between businesses.

Actually fax is optimal in those scenarios compared to mail service.

Daily mail, doesn't exist. Desperately clinging to something that isn't needed anymore because change is scary.

Citizen to citizen absolutely nothing NEEDS to be delivered daily.
Business to citizen can make a special class of delivery (it already exists, overnight) if it's that dire; spoiler, nothing is.
Business to business; electronic - "Must be hardcopy" Send it tomorrow. If your out of touch rules require hardcopy then you pay extra to get it overnighted.

It's really that black and white.

Open challenge to name literally anything that you receive that you need on that day.
Sent by priority/First class mail.
Can't be sent in advance.
And Must be physically delivered.
(Without paying extra to have it expedited. because I already covered it express/overnight).

There is nothing in existence. There is nothing that can't wait till tomorrow.

You mail things because they aren't time sensitive, because you never know when it will arrive. (without paying extra for a special service)

Metro area MI (oakland macomb wayne counties)is getting mail every other day, right now, and there is literally no one complaining about it. It can be done everywhere else too.

Challenge accepted, look above your two posts.

Protection orders for service can't be sent in advance because they're sent when they're received by the Sheriff's Office, comes straight from court.

Must be physically delivered pursuant to state law. Using priority mail is within the bounds of the law.