USPS may lay off 120,000 workers

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I still think that USPS is one of the best values the US residents get.

Darius.....you and I have disagreed on a lot but we agree on that!

[Eric DeSilva]

I used the word "alleged" because USPS is not really a monopoly. You can still send letters and packages using private service providers.

The USPS has a statutory monopoly under the Private Express Statute, and its core service--letter delivery--is protected from competition to this day. There is an exemption for priority mail delivery. I find it interesting that the areas exempted from the PES are the area you keep referring to in terms of prices--parcels and express mail. And, I continue to note that the services are not the same--among other things, my recollection is that USPS services do not have real time tracking.

I supplied their pricing list.

You have supplied comparative pricing for some services. I find it absurd to believe that people routinely pay UPS and FedEx if USPS is so consistent about underpricing them. You seem to have ignored the concept that if this is a competitive market and these products are fungible, your view would result in UPS and FedEx being bankrupt, not USPS. Besides, the whole point of this is that under the PES, no one can compete with the for First Class mail, so there is no possibility of a price comparison.

On a general note, I don't consider monopolies (USPS is not one of them) beneficial in general but in some cases they are either necessary, or the least harmful of possible evils. Examples are national governments, state funded military forces, oversight and allocation of radio frequencies, tobacco and alcohol control etc.

All of the functions you are quoting are intrinsically governmental functions. None of those has a marketplace dynamic, unlike delivery services, so none are applicable to the present issue. Frankly, what you should have cited was trademarks, copyrights and patents, which are the government granted monopolies that are generally conceded to be good. But the policy there is clear--government grants those monopolies in order to stimulate innovation. That doesn't apply to the postal service either.

I have no need to believe anything about the prices. I always verify, as shown above.

You hypothesize that the $0.44 charge for First Class Mail is a great deal. Because of the PES, you cannot verify that in a head to head price comparison. Frankly, if commercial providers rates for these services were higher, you might argue that there is a prima facie case the USPS is cross subsidizing those services from its monopoly revenues, which would imply their rates are supracompetitive.

I also never praised monopolies. That is what you think I wrote.

You wrote "USPS's alleged 'monopoly' is good for the customer." If you aren't saying that a postal monopoly is good for consumers, what did you mean?

[Jim Heikes]

A quick story............in December 2010 I sent a check to purchase my 3520B...........the check was received March 20th..................'nuff said

[Bruce Page]

A quick story............in December 2010 I sent a check to purchase my 3520B...........the check was received March 20th..................'nuff said

That can, and does happen with all of them. No system is perfect.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

A quick story.....I wanted pay-it-forward on a gift given to me by the crazy turners here. I gave a Jet VS Mini to a Navy guy in Colorado Springs. I bought a double-walled cardboard box.....Lined it with plywood and screwed everything down.

FedEX destroyed the lathe. They did reimburse me for it after I provided proof of costs.

Point being.......there are bad stories about every company .....and yes the USPS......

[Bonnie Campbell]

The problem I see with closing of post offices is I NEED mine. Where my home is I have to have a PO box. I can't get any home delivery from the USPS. But I'd still pick their services over the available alternatives.

[Dennis Peacock]

You mean that y'all are still frettin' and fussin' over this?

[Greg Peterson]

The fact that the USPS insists on maintaining its monopoly suggests to me that they feel the need to be protected from competitive forces, which would imply their rates are high.

What evidence do you have that the USPS insists on this arrangement?

The USPS is heavily regulated. By statute, the USPS is required to provide mail service to all Americans, regardless their location or the cost of providing the service. And at a uniform price. Doesn't sound like a monopoly to me. IOW, they don't make the rules.

Again, in 2006 congress mandated that the USPS have a fully funded, 75 year retirement plan, within in ten years, at a cost to the USPS of $55.5 billion. 75 years? Really? That seems to be a curiously long period. I would not be surprised if UPS and Fedex didn't have a hand in crafting that mandate. More than one way to eliminate competition.

And what is there to say that Fedex and UPS couldn't merge at one point in the future? Or engage in some collusion. There really isn't that much competition these days.

I like that the folks handling my mail are screened and have extensive back ground checks. I like waving and talking to my mail carrier. I like knowing that it will cost me .44 cents to mail a letter from anywhere in the US to anywhere in the US and that it will get there in three days.

[Brian Elfert]

The problem I see with closing of post offices is I NEED mine. Where my home is I have to have a PO box. I can't get any home delivery from the USPS. But I'd still pick their services over the available alternatives.

I would expect some form of post office box will still be available for those areas with no mail delivery. The counter would be closed and no employees would be available. Perhaps the PO Boxes might get moved to a local business?

[Curt Harms]

I like knowing that it will cost me .44 cents to mail a letter from anywhere in the US to anywhere in the US and that it will get there in three days.

I was exchanging correspondence with a business in Shrewsbury, NJ. a few years back. Shrewsbury is about 70 miles as the crow flies. A letter would take 3-5 days. If it was time sensitive, we used FedEx. First class from the West Coast was quicker and more predictable. True story.

[Brian Elfert]

Hardly anybody pays full list price with Fedex or UPS if they have any sort of volume. Heck, even I have a Fedex account for those four overnight letters I sent last year. I don't recall if I got a discount or not. My understanding is the USPS can't give volume discounts. They can give discounts if the customer does some of the work like presorting or hauling the mail to the sorting facility directly. USPS did start giving discounted rates for Priority Mail this year through Ebay/Paypal.

[Curt Harms]

I would expect some form of post office box will still be available for those areas with no mail delivery. The counter would be closed and no employees would be available. Perhaps the PO Boxes might get moved to a local business?

I wouldn't be surprised by that. Having the Post Office in the 'general store' is not unprecedented and in sparely populated areas probably makes a lot of sense. I'm surprised some facilities in my area haven't been targeted for closing. I just did a search for post offices within 10 miles of my front door. There are 25!! This is a pretty heavily populated area but it's not urban and most people drive, not walk. Do we really need 25 post offices in a 10 mile radius?

[Scott Shepherd]

I saw a commercial last night for them and I think the guy said they had shipped over 1 billion priority mail boxes. So, back to my original point......you gave away what would have been at least $2 billion dollars worth of boxes. I'm not sure I'd be bragging about that.

$2 billion could go a long way for them.

[Matt Meiser]

Well, $2B "retail" value. Its the Federal government so they probably cost $6 billion (its a joke.) Seriously though, that assumes the cost of the "free" box isn't rolled into the cost of priority mail. Like someone else said above, the way they push Priority Mail, its got to be a money maker for them.

I still think the number of locations is way too high. I checked on Google Maps and there are 12 or 13 post offices in our mostly rural "bedroom community" county where the majority of people travel to neighboring counties to work. There are 4 or 5 more within a couple miles of the county lines. In a lot of cases those offices are only a few miles apart. Quite a few of those could be merged with very little impact on the public. I can't imagine much of an impact on our household if the mail only came say MWF. They could do MWF to 1/2 the routes 1 week, TR to the others, then switch the following week. They could also cut the ridiculous number of holidays that aren't observed by anyone but government and banks to keep deliveries more consistent. They could cut weekday hours to keep Saturday office hours. Lots of things they could do to result in savings that wouldn't have all that great an impact.

BTW, I stopped at a post office this week. To drop a package in the Fedex drop box out front.

[Brian Elfert]

I saw a commercial last night for them and I think the guy said they had shipped over 1 billion priority mail boxes. So, back to my original point......you gave away what would have been at least $2 billion dollars worth of boxes. I'm not sure I'd be bragging about that.

$2 billion could go a long way for them.

I don't know why you are so fixated on the "free" Priority Mail boxes. The USPS includes the cost of the box in the price of the service. There is no way it costs the USPS even close to $2 billion for those boxes.

U-Line sells the size boxes the USPS uses for between 27 and 56 cents for volumes of 1000+. The USPS certainly pays less since they buy way more than 1000 at a time. Probably 75% of all Priority Mail shipments I get use the USPS box. I bet a lot of shippers would reconsider their choice of shippers if the box wasn't included.

Edit: I just got a Priority Mail shipment today and it came in one of the "free" boxes.