Comments on: A rate less flat

By: McGehee

McGehee — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:47:49 +0000

FedEx and UPS also compete with each other, which — as Chaz’s reply alludes — has at least as much impact on their rates as the Postal Service’s rates could on the same types of service. In fact, were the USPS free of competition in those other types of delivery, it would be free to use its rates in those classes to subsidize (even more than they already do) the price of a first-class stamp.

Another point which actually weakens the health-care analogy, however, is this: because it is no longer a general-fund-supported government program, the USPS has to raise sufficient revenue within its own activities to pay its own expenses. This is because it’s a service, not an entitlement.

The ObamaCare “public option” is being offered as an entitlement, which means it will therefore be at least as expensive as the CBO estimates, and I think they’re still low-balling it something fierce.

By: CGHill

CGHill — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:26:47 +0000

Well, “option” may be the wrong word here, since USPS has a legal monopoly on what is defined as first-class mail: FedEx and friends can only do what they do with letters because they’ve met the letter of the law regarding “urgency.” Offsetting this to some extent: (1) Congress has the actual Constitutional power to get the mail delivered, and (2) the USPS will deliver (eventually) to the farthest reaches of Snake’s Navel, Nebraska, where no one has ever seen a UPS truck.

I do hope the MWC staffers remembered that they can’t legally drop those flyers in people’s mailboxes.

By: Closet Atheist

Closet Atheist — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:56:14 +0000

Midwest City yesterday had city workers delivering temporarily-service-interruption letters to ‘customers’ in a friend’s neighborhood. “Why not mail them?”, my friend asked the city worker. His reply: “Because have us do it personally is cheaper, and we know they were delivered before the service interruption.”

When it’s cheaper to pay a city worker to hand-deliver letters than to send them thru the post office, there’s a problem.

Now as for the comparison to health care, do you have any idea what FedEx and UPS would charge if there wasn’t a ‘public option’? If the only other option was a private courier? Even an mismanaged public option forces the price down.

By: Jeffro

Jeffro — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:30:50 +0000

Everything is “by the book” depending on who is interpreting whatever particular rule at the time. Larger post offices are run closer to the vest than the smaller ones that can and do relax the rules. Which drives the authoritarians upstairs nuts.

By: Cary

Cary — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:46:39 +0000

<—-agrees with anne

By: anne

anne — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:55:20 +0000

And they wonder why people are using FedEx and UPS almost to the exclusion of the USPO these days….