A 2 party screw-up

So they are negotiating now to "fix" the postal service.

6 day service will remain intact. Ditto home delivery, all kinds of stuff. Apparently they're the only government agency that actually has to save for their pensions, but I don't want to get into that because it misses the point of an easy fix.

This whole notion of the mail is so obsolete and expensive. Regular mail should be 5 days. It should go to a mail bank, consisting of a grid of boxes on corners. This will save so many man hours on deliver. Parcels which are expensive should go to homes and be much more of a cash cow and allow the USPS to compete with anyone else because their network and infrastructure is affordable and already in place.

Rather than cut costs and make it profitable (like Canada), they are going to "save" it just draining taxpayers further.

We don't live in a day and age where to be connected you need a float plane to deliver your mail. Everyone is connected anyway.

How is this not an area where fiscal conservation can save the day and solve part of our budget woes?

Chaffetz is one of the R's heading this up, which just goes to show you how wrongheaded he is about everything.

What about those of us who live in rural areas. We don't have corners for grid boxes.

So maybe Chaffetz actually likes us country folk

Do you have to go to town to buy groceries and gas?

I mean, Canada has 1/11th the population of the US in the same area basically, so it is much more rural, and they make it work.

1. Go see what they do
2. Copy their asses
3. Profit

I dunno, I think I can like rural people and city people just fine and still cut saturday delivery and require people to leave their houses and go to a relatively convenient location to look at some damn junk mail. It costs us a lot of money and I would rather see it used for something else. There is no Saturday that I need to get some dumb mail. If it's a parcel, sure, and I would expect to pay for the service.

mowzee on down to town and pick up your mail when you get your supplies and provisions.  

Just send me smoke signals

What about the elderly or disabled.  Are they expected to walk to some central location to get their mail?

Nothing is as simple as it seems.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-postal-service-losing-tens-of-millions-annually-subsidizing-shipments-to-alaska/2014/06/28/3d007fd6-e51a-11e3-afc6-a1dd9407abcf_story.html

snoloco wrote

What about the elderly or disabled.  Are they expected to walk to some central location to get their mail?

Nothing is as simple as it seems.

It's dead simple. Delivery to the door needs to go. Especially on Saturdays.

Plus I have a really cool mailbox I built out of old skis that I don't want to take down

campgottagopee wrote

Plus I have a really cool mailbox I built out of old skis that I don't want to take down

It'll still look cool - just like the phonograph in your living room.

campgottagopee wrote

Plus I have a really cool mailbox I built out of old skis that I don't want to take down

Picture please?

We shall see --- next thing I know all you guys will be copying me

ml242 wrote

campgottagopee wrote

Plus I have a really cool mailbox I built out of old skis that I don't want to take down

It'll still look cool - just like the phonograph in your living room.

ml242 wrote

snoloco wrote

What about the elderly or disabled.  Are they expected to walk to some central location to get their mail?

Nothing is as simple as it seems.

It's dead simple. Delivery to the door needs to go. Especially on Saturdays.

You're sounding a little like PeeTex here.  Please answer my original question about whether the elderly or disabled are expected to walk to some central location to get their mail.

not me!  I'll be driving by hanging out of TJF's passenger side door window while his tires are smoking swinging for home runs on that custom built mail box!

That thing is in the ground!!! Take a swing tuff guy and it will rip your arms off!! THWACK

Plus we have a VERY aggressive neighborhood watch program in Virgil --- it won't be pretty ---- these farm boys around here mean business ----  we're all damn good shots

snoloco wrote

You're sounding a little like PeeTex here.  Please answer my original question about whether the elderly or disabled are expected to walk to some central location to get their mail.

No, that has very little to do with the fact that you could chop a considerable portion of the labor required (OT, etc) by getting rid of Saturdays. I really want to know why fiscally minded people would not be open to that. They bitch and bitch about the USPS and if you do just that, you come close to bridging the gap. But instead they spend other peoples money to maintain the status quo.

Canada was in the same position we were and are now in the black five of the last six years. It's outrageous they want to complain and complain about costs and never do anything about the status quo.

Want a solution for your problem? M-Th delivery to the communal boxes located conveniently down the road from your house. On Fridays the handicapped and infirm with doctors notes get a bundle of their entire weeks mail.

There, I just solved our problems w/r/t the mail.

You get rid of the extreme rural deliveries like in Alaska or other places out west, and you could save another 50M+.



Mail delivery, unlike free speech, is not guaranteed in the constitution. Why not fix the problem without bothering with messing with pensions or the other stuff that gets super messy? Most of the mail in spam and ads and it is costing us money to deliver this garbage.

US Mail is a jobs program at this point. Good jobs are hard to come by these days and the Postal Service offers good pay, good benefits and an actual pension! All in places that generally don't have that stuff (rural areas, remote areas).

Probably not a reason to keep it going, but I'm sure that the workers at UPS and Fedex would love to get USPS jobs.

If we're not going to have government jobs like those, we need to guarantee that private employers pay fair wages and provide good benefits. I think that is more of a heavy lift than just giving people good jobs.

Screw a jobs program. UPS has fine benefits and a union, anyone is welcome to apply there. No one is even talking about the jobs, they are obsessing over this thing that mattered a 100 years ago that doesn't any more. I am sure some usps guys would rather have a buyout and climb everest than work on Saturdays. We gotta fix these books and we gotta start here.

After that, fire the whole TSA.