[lubbockjoe]

Please contact your Representative and urge them to cosponsor and support HR 1351, a bill introduced by Rep. Steve Lynch (D-MA).

The U.S. Postal Service is currently facing a financial crisis partly due to the recession but more significantly caused by the burdensome requirement of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act that it make payments of $5.4 billion dollars annually to prefund it retiree health benefits. Absent those prefunding mandates the Postal Service would actually be operating at a surplus over the last 4 fiscal years.

Recent independent audits performed for the USPS Office of Inspector General and the Postal Regulatory Commission have shown that the USPS has already overfunded its Civil Service Retirement Fund by over $50 billion dollars and also has overfunded the Federal Employee Retirement System by nearly $7 billion dollars.

H.R. 1351 is a bill that would resolve those financial inequities and bring the Postal Service into financial solvency with no use of tax payer money.

Please take the time to contact your Representative and ask that they cosponsor, and later support HR 1351 when it is considered in the House of Representatives.

[Kman]

Dont support it, let this antiquated government agency die.

[lubbockjoe]

Thanks Kman, I knew I could count on your support.

[Rei Murasame]

H.R. 1351 is a bill that would resolve those financial inequities and bring the Postal Service into financial solvency with no use of tax payer money.

This seems like a decent bill to me, it's not often that legislators anywhere can have their cake and genuinely be able to eat it too. It should be interesting to see how this bill fares, since I have a funny feeling that it will be blocked.

[Wolfman]

Dont support it, let this antiquated government agency die.

Why? It's better then the Free Market.

[Nets]

What is the benefit of keeping the postal service?

[Wolfman]

Mail? I know private companies could, but the longest I've spent in line at a post office was 3 minutes. I've never spent less then 10 at private places. Sounds like the Postal Service is better to me.

[Fasces]

All mail I have recieved in the last ten years has been either electronic, or a package delivered to my door by a private company. I have no misplaced nostalgia for the postal service, and would not oppose to it being cut.

[Wolfman]

Never get magazines? I think most of my mail is either that or bills from companies I'm too lazy to switch to an email form.

[Fasces]

I can read TIME or the National Review online.

[Wolfman]

I get two that are not available in online formats. I'm also not sure if Netflix will deliver through someone other then the Postal Service.

[Fasces]

I'm sure they will make the arrangements if they have too. It seems that a company would jump at the chance to be given exclusive rights to distributing what is the largest video business on the continent.

[Wolfman]

Regardless, there are still several companies (some of them pretty major) which would have to get contracts, which could completely fuck mail up for awhile. And a large chunk of mail is still going to for things like bills, newspapers, and magazines, because lets be honest with ourselves, most home owners are 30+, and people 35+ don't know how to use the internet. Which means alot of the companies that could replace the Postal Service would have to run regular routes like UPS anyways. But, unless one company replaces all of the routes in an area, you'd have one company running to my house, and a different running to my neighbor. Which would drive up the cost of sending and receiving mail.

Alternatively, instead of me only getting mail from one company (which would require my senders to know what my delivery service is), you could make it so I have to go to a company warehouse to get my mail, or have the replacement service only deliver once a week or something. Which replaces increased cost with increased time before I get my mail (a problem since my local daily newspaper delivers by mail), or making it difficult for me to get my mail.

So, only a mail monopoly would be a good idea. Otherwise it's just a hilariously inefficiencant system.

[Fasces]

A monopoly is always the theoretically most efficient method of distribution and service in any macro economy. Regardless, your concerns are minor (a phase out period would prevent chaos, for example) and it is an easily removed expense from state accounts, something necessary these days, so that the state may focus on more important needs with its remaining resources, such as health care.

[Wolfman]

your concerns are minor (a phase out period would prevent chaos, for example)

Prevent chaos, but would still up the cost for the consumer. If we're ok with that, we could raise the value of stamps which would reduce the debt on states. I think I was once told that the value of stamps is supposed to be slightly higher then the cost of the postal service per month, so, really, that should be done anyways.

[Decky]

I'd want a state post office to to stick around.

because lets be honest with ourselves, most home owners are 30+, and people 35+ don't know how to use the internet.

This whole argument annoys me. There are plenty of young people who don't know (or want to know) about buying things from the internet. The same allies to the idea that we should all read magazines online.

I can read TIME or the National Review online.

Reading a book is on hundred times the experience of reading a screen. Learning (memory especially) is contextual. I remember things a lot better if I have read them from a book than if I read them from a screen (which is just as well as otherwise my mind would be clogged up with nonsense).

The post still exists because there is a demand for it and there hopefully always will be. I mean does anyone actually prefer a birthday email to a birthday card? If you were fired by email rather than by letter would that seem fair? Email is for trivial stuff, real business should be conducted by post.

[lubbockjoe]

What is the benefit of keeping the postal service?

I guess the same could be said of public sector police, fire fighters and teachers. Some things should be in the public domain, I believe the postal service is one of them. As Fasces pointed out, “A monopoly is always the theoretically most efficient method of distribution and service in any macro economy.”

More specifically to your question, I agree with Steve Hutkins’ assessment of the social and economic value of postal services.

More importantly, this dire talk of imminent insolvency and the necessity for drastic cuts is an example of what Naomi Klein calls “the Shock Doctrine.” In her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Klein illustrates how capitalism exploits crises to increase profits — the Bush administration outsourcing the “War on Terror” to Halliburton, the beaches of Southeast Asia auctioned off as tourist resorts after the tsunami, the public housing, hospitals and schools of New Orleans never to be re-opened after Katrina.
In a similar fashion, the Postal Service management, acting on behalf of the corporate class, is taking advantage of the recession, which is looking more and more like a double-dipper, to shock people into thinking it’s going completely broke so that they can do things they've longed to do for decades, well before the “crisis” emerged — like close “under-performing” post offices, lay off workers, and undermine the unions. This is why the postal service is trying to scare the hell out of us.

The rural postal customer has the most to lose if the postal monopoly is broken.

Furthermore, a congressional mandate is killing the U.S. Postal Service:
A 2006 postal reform law requires the USPS to pre-fund 75 years' worth of future retiree health benefits within just 10 years.
No other federal agency or private enterprise is forced to pre-fund similar benefits like this, especially on such an aggressive schedule.
This postal-only mandate costs the USPS $5.5 billion per year. It accounts for 100 percent of the Postal Service’s $20 billion in losses over the past four years. Without the mandate, the USPS would have been profitable over the past four years, and rather than having to use up its $15 billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury to cover the pre-funding obligation, the Postal Service would have had significant borrowing authority to ride out the bad economy it now faces.

The Postal Service and its employees don’t want a taxpayer bailout. They have not received any taxpayer funds in nearly 30 years.

[Wolfman]

This whole argument annoys me. There are plenty of young people who don't know (or want to know) about buying things from the internet. The same allies to the idea that we should all read magazines online.

That was a joke, calm down.

[Fasces]

The post still exists because there is a demand for it and there hopefully always will be. I mean does anyone actually prefer a birthday email to a birthday card? If you were fired by email rather than by letter would that seem fair? Email is for trivial stuff, real business should be conducted by post.

Once upon a time, the guildmaster told his apprentice - real business is conducted in person. Post is for the trivial stuff.

[Wolfman]

Once upon a time, the guildmaster told his apprentice - real business is conducted in person. Post is for the trivial stuff.

And I agree. But email is more trivial things.