“Compare it to France at almost $3 and England at $2.50, and the longest distance those letters have to travel is about 600 miles smaller than the state of Texas,” he told lawmakers.
“We deliver from the tip of Puerto Rico to the tip of Alaska for 78 cents. That’s a distance of 5,000 miles.”
He said if the USPS increased first class stamp costs to 95 cents, it “would largely solve our controllable loss” while still remaining the lowest-priced stamp in the industrialized world.
I’d be willing to cough up a buck per mail if the USPS would charge more for junk mailers “bulk mail” rates. They use the system every day. Make them pay more first to make junk mail a thing of the past.
Then I would happily let the USPS catch up postage wise with the rest of the world.
Jack the cost of bulk mail to help both improve revenue and reduce waste.
Remember when saving the environment was a good idea?
Saving the environment? We’re in a new age now, the “get it while you can before anyone else does” era that is so brand new and not a rehash of the way the world used to work before workers revolted.
Corpo scum wanted us to save the environment. That was their good idea to distract us from the face that THEY are ruining the planet and there’s nothing you or I can do to offset their destruction.
Make them pay more first to make junk mail a thing of the past.
37% of USPS revenue was from junk mail. Idk if raising rates would make it go away, but I could at least see a world in which raising rates forced businesses to reevaluate its cost-effectiveness.
The post office is kind of regulated like electric utilities - they’re not allowed to charge one customer more for the service to subsidize another.
In this case, junk mailers are presorted and sent shorter distances, so they’re cheaper to deliver.
Unfortunately there is no bulk mail rate. Third class mail is lower cost because it is either: presorted (so it should ostensibly save the postal service on the labor to sort it), discounted for non-profit companies, or is “Every Door Direct Mail” (EDDM) which requires no sorting because it isn’t addressed. EDDM is also often if not usually sent straight to a post office via a third party so it never goes to a sorting plant. Third class mail also doesn’t receive the return service which all first class mail does.
The rate on it should be increased, but they do receive a lower level of service and sometimes save the postal service on the labor to deliver it.
I talk to postal workers every day for work. The postal system is very deliberately being sabotaged from the top. Recently I was told that sorters were no longer allowed to work overtime. If there is more mail one day, they just have to leave some of it for the next day. If this happens for days in a row (because of Valentines Day cards or tax season to randomly pick hypotheticals) they fall further and further behind every day.
The federal administration wants you to think the postal service is a failure so they are forcing it to fail. They want to sell it out to FedEx, UPS, etc so they can raise the prices and make huge profits.
You’re exactly right. The Republicans’ long game has been a systemic takedown of USPS because they want mail service privatized for profit. It’s the same basic plan as they have for public education.
I have a real problem with this article. There’s a lot of context that is not included. It’s very poor reporting.
As far as I know, the USPS is the only federal agency that has ever been required to pre-fund retirement benefits for every worker that it employs. It is also supposed to be self-sufficient (and was solvent until the retirement funding thing) but it also requires approval of Congress to change any of its pricing.
“…the post office continues to come to us for more money…”
No, they don’t. They’re not asking Congress for money. They’re simply asking for permission to charge consumers more. They’re not even asking to charge a fair “market rate” for the service they provide. (Because let’s be honest, UPS and FedEx are never going to deliver anything, no matter how small, for a dollar, or even five dollars.)
That’s the one.
Since 2013, the prefunding mandate is responsible for most of the Postal Service’s net losses, and it has defaulted on its prefunding payments since 2012. No other federal agency or private sector business prefunds its retirement benefits. The uncertainty inherent in satisfying the PAEA prefunding mandate is creating real instability in the Postal Service’s operations.
Organizations get the unions they build through greed and error.
If they have to pre-build their retirement programme, you know some suit tried to raid it.
Isnt that part of the plan? let plebeians mail in their ballots. “Oh my, we closed the postal service in those locations.” so no votes against drumpf. sorry,
As someone who relies on media mail for my small business, rates have increased every 4 months for the last 5 years.
This is purposeful. The administration is not interested in a public post office and would love to see it privatized.
The shitheads in office want to privatize mail. they also don’t want YOU to vote by mail (it’s fine when they do it tho).
That’s because the government stopped from being it so they could buy two more bombs to use once on a foreign land. Why support your people’s needs when you can blow up other countries and take their stuff?!
Ooh can amazon lose bunch of stock over that too please?
Raise the rate.
The only reason this is challenging is because they are making it that way intentionally so they can offer the USPS as a sacrifice to the false gods of the free market.
Not raise the rate, get rid of pre funding 75 years of pensions.
You’re absolutely right they should eliminate that ridiculous provision! Absolutely bonkers.
I don’t know the math and I don’t see it listed in the article, but would that alone right the ship?
Whatever can be done to salvage the service - it’s a true public good. It’s like the Internet before it got mostly enshittified.
This goes more in depth but does say it would be making a profit if not for that mandate that no other agency is made to. https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis-and-how-to-fix-it/
