I'm surprised it's only going up that little, considering the cost of pensions and fuel these days. I do not believe the USPS should be expected to be profitable, given that they function as a Congressional mandate, but compared to what the private industry charges for letters, it's a bargain.

Followup to my own comment -- The USPS can only increase rates with inflation, so $0.01 on FC mail was the maximum.

Gig103: I'm surprised it's only going up that little, considering the cost of pensions and fuel these days. I do not believe the USPS should be expected to be profitable, given that they function as a Congressional mandate, but compared to what the private industry charges for letters, it's a bargain.

This. I don't give a flying fark that they lose money.

The cost of USPS services should be about 150% of what it is now. Tying down their ability to raise prices to keep pace with operating costs was doomed from the start.

Gig103: ...but compared to what the private industry charges for letters, it's a bargain.

You can't really compare letter delivery costs between the USPS and UPS/FedEx. It's illegal for a private carrier to compete with the USPS on anything resembling first class mail letter delivery. See the Private Express Statutes for an explanation of how private carriers are regulated.

There's nothing wrong with it, as granting the USPS a monopoly on the bulk of our mail keeps then functioning and able to justify delivery to costly areas. But that also means nobody can give you cross-town delivery for 20-cents a letter. Is it possible? No idea, but it's illegal so who cares?

Once upon a time that was done with the American Letter Mail Company -- they delivered letters for 5 cents instead of the 20 cents that the USPS was charging. The government eventually shut them down, but they did have to lower rates down to 12 cents once people saw it was possible to deliver them for less than 20 cents.

fusillade762: Gig103: I'm surprised it's only going up that little, considering the cost of pensions and fuel these days. I do not believe the USPS should be expected to be profitable, given that they function as a Congressional mandate, but compared to what the private industry charges for letters, it's a bargain.

I seem to remember hearing somewhere that congress forced the USPS to pay upfront for, like 20 years of pension benefits in 5 years or something, and that's the reason they're in such a financial bind. Too lazy to look it up atm, though.

Not 20. 70 or 75, I can't remember. Also, the vast majority of their debt right now is because of paying for pensions for people who haven't been BORN yet, and because Congress decided to make them a corporation.

They can't raise the prices because they are a socialist tool. They clearly aren't as efficient at jacking up prices as well as private enterprise. Free market FTW!

Thrag: FedEx and UPS both have letter delivery services that very much do resemble first class mail delivery.

Not really. From my previous link about the PES statutes:

In 1979 the Postal Service authorized the delivery of extremely urgent letters outside the USPS; this has given rise to delivery services such as Federal Express and UPS. These letters must either cost at least the greater of $3 or twice what First Class (or Priority) mail service would cost, or they must be delivered within strict time limits or otherwise lose value. They must be marked "EXTREMELY URGENT". Records of pick up and delivery must be maintained for Postal Service inspection if the time sensitive exception is being used.

They're forbidden to charge less unless they can get it there within the time limit, and you're not going to get overnight delivery on a letter with signature costing less than $0.45 from anybody. Hell, the USPS charges $5 for a single certified letter.

This is why coming out with forever stamps was stupid from a business point of view.

Sure it brings in a lot of revenue right away, but it reduces your revenues later. Someone like me can buy a couple 100 rolls of stamps and have that last over a decade. In the past I would have had to add more postage as the rates increased, now I just keep using the same stamps. Had I bought forever stamps back in 2001 (I know they weren't around back then, but bear with me.) when the rate was $.34 I would still be sending letters today for $.34 instead of $.44. Now add that up across billions of letters and you start to see the revenue problem this creates.

The Southern Dandy: So back in the founding fathers time, Americans were smart enough to create the post office as a government service. Why aren't we smart enough to make the internet a government service/infrastructure, like the interstate and the post office?

Because we would all be getting on the internet via 1200 baud dial-up modems.

History shows how poorly government agencies modernize. With no profit/loss mechanism they have no way to know when or how they should modernize. Much of the FAA air traffic control system is obsolete by several decades. The government has neglected interstate maintenance and expansion, diverting scarce resources into mass transit boondoggles, for decades despite market data clearly showing gas tax money should be spent on roads. The World Trade Center site, still basically a hole in the ground after over a decade. Storage site for nuclear waste, decades later and still nothing.

A road built in 1950 is still useful as a road in 2011 with nothing more than basic maintenance. Here in North Dakota there are rural bridges that were built in the early 20th century and still used today with nothing more than replacing the wood road surface once per decade.
Sending mail in 1950 is effectively the same in 2011. The USPS only engaged in serious modernization when FedEX and UPS gave stiff competition.

Telecommunications equipment installed in 1950 was only good for scrap before 1980. When the wall came down in Europe the East German phone system, government run, was so horrifically obsolete it had to be rebuilt from scratch. Other government run phone systems, like the Israeli state run telephone company have similarly dismal track records.

My local cable company, by contrast, has been continually modernizing and increasing speeds to keep up with alternative technologies. You seriously think that the same people that run the DMV and IRS are gonna get you better internet service?

skylabdown: Except that if you had invested the difference in $$$ in something like Apple, you would have made a lot more than just a tiny savings at the post office.

and if I had invested it in Enron I would have lost everything, what's your point? You're just cherry-picking the winners when statistically they would have lost money over the last decade in the stock market.

Crosshair: Because we would all be getting on the internet via 1200 baud dial-up modems.

You mean the Internet created by government? The one you're posting on right now? The one responsible for the entire development of the communications network now known as the Internet until it could be commercially viable? That government that can't do anything?

Crosshair: Had I bought forever stamps back in 2001 (I know they weren't around back then, but bear with me.) when the rate was $.34 I would still be sending letters today for $.34 instead of $.44. Now add that up across billions of letters and you start to see the revenue problem this creates.

The USPS doesn't really lose out there. In your hypothetical they sat had your money for 10 years. In that time they could use it to buy equipment, fund their messed up pension fund, or do whatever they deemed necessary.

Plus it doesn't annoy the shiat out of consumers, which helps their image out too.

Thrag: Thrag: I didn't say identical, I said similar.

To correct myself, the exact word I used was "resemble" since that was the term used in the post I replied to.

Yes, they can both send letters. The similarities end there.

Point is comparing prices between them isn't useful because it's illegal to compete with the USPS on first class letter delivery. You cannot run a system where your letter gets there in 2-4 days (which is what first class letter mail is) unless you charge substantially more than the USPS.

GAT_00: You mean the Internet created by government? The one you're posting on right now? The one responsible for the entire development of the communications network now known as the Internet until it could be commercially viable? That government that can't do anything?

Is it going to take someone coming to your home and breaking all your windows to get you to understand the broken window fallacy and to get you to stop using it? I know it has been pointed out to you before and you know it's only going to convince the economically ignorant.

The internet created by the government connected a few large scale computers together. I VERY much doubt you are using that internet.

The internet you are thinking of was created by telecommunications companies looking to make money. The Internet Protocol Suite may indeed have been first developed at DARPA, but so what? It would have been developed in the private sector and standardized much like how the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standardizes WiFi and Ethernet specifications. There is nothing special about TCP/IP that would have prevented them from being developed in the private sector by IEEE or someone else.

You simply can't say that the internet was "thanks to the government" because you don't know what would have been done with those resources had they been left in the market economy. You chose to ignore what might have been. You can't say that Robert E. Kahn and Vinton Cerf or someone else wouldn't have been hired by a private company and made those same developments at lower cost as private sector computing needs demanded them. If you can then I will ask you to prove it by winning the next powerball jackpot and telling us where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.

Thrag: Crosshair: You seriously think that the same people that run the DMV

What a wonderfully terrible example you have chosen. The DMV here completely modernized several years ago. You can do most things online and for things you need to go in to accomplish they have a system to make appointments. I've never had to spend more than 10 minutes to do anything at the DMV since the new system went into place.

Same thing in Michigan. I've been driving for 15 years and every time I have to visit them as of about 2001 I'm actually impressed with the service. It seems to be getting better and better.