Jeff Stahler for December 06, 2011

^ Monopoly on mail boxes? WTF are you talking about?

usps IS a private corporation. you can use drop-mail boxes, commercial mail centers, if you want, so what’s your point? here’s the problem: bankruptcy is a real financial issue. if they were gov, noone would care. and if UPS or FedEx can underbid them, they’re screwed. not much chance of that though. heh. they’re MAKING money, unlike the usps, doing what they do and they don’t want the federal mail mess.

No one else will be able to deliver first class mail as cheaply as the USPS. It’ll be like private health insurance — less efficient than Medicare, and a hell of a lot less effective. “Sorry, we don’t deliver to Butte, there’s not enough profit in it.”

UPS (union) is cheaper than FedEx (non-union), and USPS is still cheapest (union and it IS a “corporation” quasi-government). USPS was established to serve ALL Americans, not just those on major city routes. BTW, where I live, both USPS and UPS are consistently faster, usually many days, to weeks, faster than “ground” FedEx.

The internet has indeed “hurt” first class, now if they’d just make banks and other solicitation letters PAY first class! Even “junk” mail DOES bring in revenue, but they raised magazine rates, not “junk”.

It’s no secret that the Postal Service has been losing money since 2007. What are not well known are the financial demands of the Postal Reform Act of 2006 — demands not faced by the private sector. Though the USPS is self-supporting, its finances are tied to the federal budget because postal employees participate in federal retirement plans. In 2006, Congress required that the USPS prefund 80 percent of future postal retiree health benefits. This will cost more than $5 billion a year through 2016. No other federal agency or private company carries such a heavy burden.

Without the prefunding requirement, the Postal Service would have been better able to weather the recent recession. In 2008, prefunding contributed to a loss of $2.8 billion. Without it, we would have been $2.8 billion in the black.

Read Steve’s comment. The republican house snuck through the requirement to pay ahead postal employees’ retirement back in 2006. This is the only reason the postal service has money problems.

buy it today for .44, as it will cost $100 to mail an envelope in the future when inflation kicks in.

“But if you end the monopoly on the personal mailboxes you will be able to farm out some of the work and bring in more competition. And the proper price for a delivery will be established.”

Competition to what? The USPS by law has to deliver mail to rural areas that UPS and Fedex REFUSE to deliver to. And you are forgetting one thing: if the USPS is a monopoly and its coughing up blood as we speak, what do you think competition will do to the post office? It’ll go out of bitnez.

“But anyone with brains can see the 90’s way of doing things just will not work and is not needed.”

Come up with a better excuse. The USPS has been around since the founding of this country. Its been written in our constitution. So obviously it has been doing very well until a certain president (War Shrub) with the help of the Republican Congress decided to stick a knife on the side of something that should be an icon of American ingenuity.

“The ratio to junk vs my mail is about 10 to 1.”

So you’re problem is NOT with the USPS then. They’re not the ones peddling on behalf of Domino’s.