United States Postal Service =

[DontHateOState]

I see your 8 Billion and raise you 3 billion:

Insurance giant AIG posts $9 billion Q4 loss; yearly loss $11 billion.

Oh, but incompetence only exists in government. Funny how we ended up paying for both.

I'll take a private packaging service over the USPS any day. The only thing the USPS is good for is "free" boxes.

 

[DaytonBuck]

Has anyone ever seen a woman in the ballpark of attractive work for them?

 

[BUCKYLE]

I'm so glad that the members here are mature. I would expect comments along the lines of "my package always arrives on time or early when I send it to your mom." That would be tastless though.

I don't use the USPS when delivering my package to Mili's mother. I hand deliver that shit.

Has anyone ever seen a woman in the ballpark of attractive work for them?

Yes. Some of the carriers are quite hot. Legs that could pop the top off a keg.

 

[Taosman]

This won't end well.............

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

I don't use the USPS when delivering my package to Mili's mother. I hand deliver that shit.

Not what you wife says...

 

[BUCKYLE]

Not what you wife says...

Me not have wife.

 

[Fungo Squiggly]

While the people I deal with at the USPS are mostly bitches, I have no complaints about their standard service, even with options like certified or registered. The fact I can get a letter from here to California in a couple days for $.44 is remarkable, IMO.

For priority shipments, though, give me FedEx any day.

 

[MightbeaBuck]

I see your 8 Billion and raise you 3 billion:

Insurance giant AIG posts $9 billion Q4 loss; yearly loss $11 billion.

Oh, but incompetence only exists in government. Funny how we ended up paying for both.

It's a combination of government and political incompetence that is the cause for both failures.

Bloated and bloaters.

 

[MightbeaBuck]

Yes. Some of the carriers are quite hot. Legs that could pop the top off a keg.

link?

 

[CookyPuss]

Going Postal - Business - The Atlantic

Every time the relative efficiency of government services comes up, some conservative brings up the damn post office, and then some liberal tiredly points out that priority mail is cheaper than any comparable service from the Post Office. It's not exactly surprising that the post office can undercut UPS prices with $23 billion a year in government subsidies. The question is, do we get $23 billion in extra value? Arguably, we used to. Mail, like other forms of communication, has network effects--each node becomes more valuable as you add more nodes to the network. Arguably, it was a natural monopoly with capital costs that were best handled by the government. Futhermore, things like our legal system have become very dependent on the mail system, which allows us to legally serve notice and so forth. But as has been noted elsewhere, mail is largely becoming an anachronism--I barely even get my bills that way any more. Mostly, I get catalogues, Christmas cards, and the occasional invitation to a wedding or baby shower--not $23 billion worth of service. Probably not even worth my per-capita share of the postal service, which if my math is correct, works out to about $75 a year. And then, of course, babies and small children neither receive much mail, nor pay much in taxes. So call it $100. Would you pay $100 a year for the privilege of getting mail? Yeah, me neither. You can't even downsize the thing to the parts that work--the parts that are most valuable are the really expensive, broadly distributed network of post offices and employees. This is the part that Congress won't let die, and which will never be able to pay for themselves. We remain emotionally attached to our post offices, and postal workers remain emotionally attached to their jobs, and congressmen remain emotionally attached to their votes. So the post office will probably hang on for another one or two decades, becoming more and more irrelevant, and sucking up more and more in the way of public funds. Hope you all like those Christmas cards.

I don't know. As we build up broadband and wireless networks, it will become less important in the future. There are quite a few people in the country like my grandmother who live in the middle of damned nowhere and have no reason to own a computer, so until they all die off we might as well quit bitching about it.

 

[CookyPuss]

Yes. Some of the carriers are quite hot. Legs that could pop the top off a keg.

link?

 

[Poe McKnoe]

The USPS is excellently run. They've only lost 8.1 billion dollars over the last 29 months!

Postal Service sees $611M February net loss - DMNews

While the people I deal with at the USPS are mostly bitches, I have no complaints about their standard service, even with options like certified or registered. The fact I can get a letter from here to California in a couple days for $.44 is remarkable, IMO.

For priority shipments, though, give me FedEx any day.

Not really. See above.

I could take your letter, jump on a plane, and have it in California in 5 hours for $0.44. Nevermind it was a $800 plane ticket. Remarkable would be if they could charge you $0.44 and turn a profit.

The USPS and land line phone companies are battling to see who can be irrelavent first.

 

[Dryden]

Futhermore, things like our legal system have become very dependent on the mail system, which allows us to legally serve notice and so forth.

Easily replaceable by having local law enforcement agencies hand deliver legal correspondence. I know this might interfere with their ability to park their cruisers next to each other in the parking lot of the Waffle House early in the morning and shoot the breeze over coffee and donuts, but we'll all have to make some sacrifices I suppose.

And last I checked, UPS and FedEx do have letter envelopes.

 

[Ttown]

Too many coffee shop workers would lose their jobs if we took the police away ffrom their normal duty.

 

[Fungo Squiggly]

Not really. See above.

I could take your letter, jump on a plane, and have it in California in 5 hours for $0.44. Nevermind it was a $800 plane ticket. Remarkable would be if they could charge you $0.44 and turn a profit.

Okay, but allocate that $8.1 billion over every piece of mail they delivered and what's it work out to?

584 million ? average number of mail pieces processed each day

USPS - Postal Facts

584 million x 23 USPS days in February = 13,432 million pieces of mail. $611 million loss in February/13,432 million pieces of mail = $.045 per piece. So $.49 to deliver a letter to California in a couple days. Still pretty damn impressive, IMO.

Even if they grossly over-estimated how much mail they process (it IS a gov't system after all ), it still works out to $.53 per item.