Trump Wants Postal Service to Charge “Much More” for Amazon Shipments

6 out of 10 of my Amazon packages are delivered by local courier... usually some random dude in their own car.
3 others are delivered by UPS
Only 1 of the 10 show up in my mailbox and marked USPS.

Maybe that's because of Prime... maybe it's because of Dallas being a major market. I don't know.
 
The UK privatized their Royal Mail service. What happened? Rich folks ran off with taxpayer money and are bleeding the Royal Mail dry.

Privatizing basic services like these is a bad idea. Unfortunately, I fear that the Republican "infrastructure" initiative will be a ploy to carve out taxpayer owned resources and dole them to the oligarchs, much like happened in Russia in the 1990s. Why will the administration get away with it? Because they can say that the sales both raise money and reduce government expenditures. Nevermind that we proles also lose valuable services along the way. As others have noted here, Congress has been sabotaging them to rally support for privatization. I guess their strategy works.

What's next? Private corporations owning the local roads, so that you have to pay to leave your driveway? For-profit fire fighting services who refuse to put out expensive fires? Scrapping the military in favor of mercenaries-for-hire? Should restaurants owners be in charge of food safety inspections? Not everything should be privatized; the USPS should be left alone.

They should not be allowed to compete, unfairly, with private businesses in package delivery. Delivering mail? Letters? Fine. There is an argument to be made in good faith that this benefits very rural areas who would end up paying very high costs for basic mail. Even that is changing.

If the USPS wants to deliver packages they need to compete in the free market. Not the subsidized government one.
 
Fuck USPS.

I ordered a 10' displayport cord. I live in an apt building of many apts. The package from amazon shipped by USPS dropped it off at the mailbox in the front while the entrance of the apartments are in the back clearly stating the address and apt. #.

Well my package got stolen. I contacted my landlord to review the security cameras for a 2PM stolen package. Last night the @10PM landlord knocked and delivered it to me, he knew who took it and did a great job. I also said I don't want to know where it was while he took care of it I am sure. Also the package was opened.

UPS and FedEx deliver to the door.
 
6 out of 10 of my Amazon packages are delivered by local courier... usually some random dude in their own car.
3 others are delivered by UPS
Only 1 of the 10 show up in my mailbox and marked USPS.

Maybe that's because of Prime... maybe it's because of Dallas being a major market. I don't know.

Amazon is doing their best to build their own delivery services everywhere. They do it through Amazon prime delivery (white unmarked vans with drivers in Amazon prime uniforms) and they do it with Amazon Flex. Basically Uber for delivering prime packages.

That's fine with me. More competition can't hurt. So long as they aren't being subsidized by the taxpayer to compete on an unfair playing field.
 
Fuck USPS.

I ordered a 10' displayport cord. I live in an apt building of many apts. The package from amazon shipped by USPS dropped it off at the mailbox in the front while the entrance of the apartments are in the back clearly stating the address and apt. #.

Well my package got stolen. I contacted my landlord to review the security cameras for a 2PM stolen package. Last night the @10PM landlord knocked and delivered it to me, he knew who took it and did a great job. I also said I don't want to know where it was while he took care of it I am sure. Also the package was opened.

UPS and FedEx deliver to the door.

It can be risky to even leave a package at the door of an apartment complex. Sometimes we'll leave that notice that says sign the back so we can leave it. If you do? We won't pay for the package if it's stolen. One thing UPS does is provide insurance on every package. Someone steals your package? We pay for it.

That's why the good drivers hide your package and don't just toss it on your front porch. Just this week at one apartment complex I hid two boxes in bushes around the back and left a note on the guys door telling him where they are with my phone number so he can call me if he can't find them. One was a next day air that he prob paid like $50 to ship. If someone is going to pay that much I want to make sure they get their box, and it doesn't get stolen.
 
Take money from the youth, The unborn, who have no say in any of it? And that money is taken by force?
Force?! LOOOL. They chose to either get employed there and they benefit in the long run. Many people even seek out companies that offer such retirement plans on purpose! There is your voluntary choice.

"Force" isn't a factor at all here.

Just like the walstreet bailouts.
The Wall St bailouts were nothing like that. The financial institutions lost money on their risky, fraudulent really, bets and begged the govt. to make them whole. Not only was there no contracts involved, it was a arbitrary decision making by Bush and his cabinet, there the whole process was crooked and half assed which was why many of them profited on their bail out money too.

Essentially no wage earner gets richer off their pension nor can they use their pension to make them whole again when they gamble and lose. They certainly don't get 0% interest loans with favorable terms to pay it all off ever either.

You don't know a thing about this subject at all.

You're really just rationalizing to support what you benefit from. You are not being consistent with your morals.
Paying into a system that me and everyone will benefit from in the long run is only financial common sense and simple math.

(edit) you still really need to address this:

We're not talking about you, we're talking about a large system that has many people who voluntarily decided to be a part of it. That and the fact that almost 9edit lol damn dyslexia) nobody who actually works for a living can do what you do now since most are only 1 paycheque away from bankruptcy and have little to no savings.

So instead of giving me just so personal anecdotes you're going to have to actually address those facts and square them with reality.
 
Force?! LOOOL. They chose to either get employed there and they benefit in the long run. Many people even seek out companies that offer such retirement plans on purpose! There is your voluntary choice.

"Force" isn't a factor at all here.


The Wall St bailouts were nothing like that. The financial institutions lost money on their risky, fraudulent really, bets and begged the govt. to make them whole. Not only was there no contracts involved, it was a arbitrary decision making by Bush and his cabinet, there the whole process was crooked and half assed which was why many of them profited on their bail out money too.

Essentially no wage earner gets richer off their pension nor can they use their pension to make them whole again when they gamble and lose. They certainly don't get 0% interest loans with favorable terms to pay it all off ever either.

You don't know a thing about this subject at all.


Paying into a system that me and everyone will benefit from in the long run is only financial common sense and simple math.

Our children and grandchildren cannot choose not to pay for the benefits we vote for ourselves. Not only can they not choose to not pay for them, they don't even get a voice in the debate. If you want to have a discussion in good faith I'm down for that. But claiming it's not force when the government puts you in prison for not paying your taxes, that you had no voice or vote in creating, as the benefits people want were voted in before you were even born, because you can just not ever get a job? I mean come on man. That's not arguing in good faith.
 
Our children and grandchildren cannot choose not to pay for the benefits we vote for ourselves.
The USPS isn't the federal govt. and its retirement fund isn't SS you know that right?? They have their own retirement system.

You didn't click on, read, or understand anything that has been linked in this thread about it at all did you?

If you want to make this about SS...well that would be off topic so I'll keep it short: a) when they grow up and if they don't want to fund SS they can leave the country if they hate it so much so kids still have personal choice, b) they can still vote to kill SS if they want (and if that fails they're free to leave still) so they STILL have some say in things even if they stay, c) SS does a better job than most other currently common retirement options (ie. 401K's, 403b's), d) "we all pay and we all benefit" is hardly some sort of moral conundrum or hypocrisy, e) historically people are crap at saving for retirement, and f) people in general now have virtually no savings and are 1 paycheck away from losing everything.
 
The USPS is able to borrow over $15 billion from the US treasury at an extremely low interest rate (1.2%). It is not directly tax payer funded, but tax payers do shoulder the burden when they borrow money. The government also gives them $2.8 BILLION in tax breaks per year.

http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/
And the government also REQUIRES that they ship to every place in the US, this similar to the argument of rural broadband, that shit ain't profitable but the USPS has to do it. They also require that the USPS ships packages on Saturdays too. Whenever everyone brings up the "taxpayer subsidies" by talking about the "value" of what they're given, they never talk about the cost of doing all these other things.
 
The USPS isn't the federal govt. and its retirement fund isn't SS you know that right?? They have their own retirement system.

You didn't click on, read, or understand anything that has been linked in this thread about it at all did you?

If you want to make this about SS...well that would be off topic so I'll keep it short: a) when they grow up and if they don't want to fund SS they can leave the country if they hate it so much so kids still have personal choice, b) they can still vote to kill SS if they want (and if that fails they're free to leave still) so they STILL have some say in things even if they stay, c) SS does a better job than most other currently common retirement options (ie. 401K's, 403b's), d) "we all pay and we all benefit" is hardly some sort of moral conundrum or hypocrisy, e) historically people are crap at saving for retirement, and f) people in general now have virtually no savings and are 1 paycheck away from losing everything.

You have to pay taxes even if you leave the country.
 
You have to pay taxes even if you leave the country.
Only if you stay a citizen. Don't play at being obtuse here, you know what I meant.

And you're still ignoring everything else about that post. Its OT so I don't expect or want a long rambling response but you gotta do better than this if you want to try and continue adequately faking discussing this subject in good faith here.

(edit) heck you still haven't addressed how you didn't even know the subject was about the USPS's retirement system and not SS despite all the info. in thread and in article, an incredible oopsie to say the least, so who needs to work on their good faith posting again??

I know its not me.

(edit) oh ho you sure showed me up in good faith n' all didn't you *rolls eyes*\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
 
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Only if you stay a citizen. Don't play at being obtuse here, you know what I meant.

And you're still ignoring everything else about that post. Its OT so I don't expect or want a long rambling response but you gotta do better than this if you want to try and continue adequately faking discussing this subject in good faith here.

(edit) heck you still haven't addressed how you didn't even know the subject was about the USPS's retirement system and not SS despite all the info. in thread and in article, so who needs to work on their good faith posting again??

I know its not me.

No it is you.
 
People are still talking about taxes supporting USPS, when that hasn't been true since the mid 80's. Then some people start talking about the subsidies like low interest loans or tax breaks. Kind of like the ones handed out like candy to most major corporations? It boils down to people being hypocritical in how they complain about it. It is not allowed to be run as a service nor as a business, what is left? USPS is still the only successful part of government.
 
Easy solution: Privatize the USPS and remove its government mandated monopoly on mailbox delivery. If they fail at that point then other services will pick up the slack. No more worrying about tax payer money going to the USPS.


you do realize that the post office gets zero tax dollars from people and is basically a privatized government service that breaks the constitutional law by making a profit every year right? oh wait you don't because you still think the postal service uses american tax dollars..
 
People are still talking about taxes supporting USPS, when that hasn't been true since the mid 80's. Then some people start talking about the subsidies like low interest loans or tax breaks. Kind of like the ones handed out like candy to most major corporations? It boils down to people being hypocritical in how they complain about it. It is not allowed to be run as a service nor as a business, what is left? USPS is still the only successful part of government.

Do you honestly think any private company can run losing 2.5 billion dollars in three months? And then doing this quarter after quarter after quarter? Come on man.
 
Do you honestly think any private company can run losing 2.5 billion dollars in three months? And then doing this quarter after quarter after quarter? Come on man.

I think this was covered by many previous posts. What other entity anywhere has to prepay retirement for employees that haven't been born yet?
 
Trump needs to fucking work on pulling his head out of his ass before tackling the biggest problems of our time. Like Amazon and the USPS. SMH. If you voted for that reality show misfit, hang your head.............in shame.
 
If I am not mistaken, the bill for the prepaid retirement is almost paid up. So we should be seeing the ledgers for USPS normalize soon unless congress bungles it up some more. And just some food for thought, if USPS does become privatized... where does all those prepaid billions go?
 
Between Trump and the wanker that's our Australian Prime Minister - I do believe we're all screwed.
 
The USPS manages its own retirement essentially so if they got privatized the retirement fund money could either be set up as its own legal entity (ie. a pension) or be handed off to whatever private entity that the USPS would be turned into and they'd do with it what they wanted.

IOW who knows.
 
I think this was covered by many previous posts. What other entity anywhere has to prepay retirement for employees that haven't been born yet?

That's not what is happening. I won't engage with your lies. You can make them up far faster than I can counter them.
 
If I am not mistaken, the bill for the prepaid retirement is almost paid up. So we should be seeing the ledgers for USPS normalize soon unless congress bungles it up some more. And just some food for thought, if USPS does become privatized... where does all those prepaid billions go?

Yeah that's actually a very very real concern.

One of my good friends, and his wife actually, do postal delivery. Don't want another egomaniac Hoffa to start using everyone's retirement to fund their own narcissistic delusions.
 
If I am not mistaken, the bill for the prepaid retirement is almost paid up. So we should be seeing the ledgers for USPS normalize soon unless congress bungles it up some more. And just some food for thought, if USPS does become privatized... where does all those prepaid billions go?

you are correct.. this should be the last year if the post office is able to get their way which we usps employee's hopes happens, we're getting sick of using broken equipment because usps isn't able to allocate money to fix it due to the shitty ass retirement fund. there's currently enough money in the fund to pay every usps employee for the next 70 years.. who the fuck needs that much money in a retirement fund. as far as if usps went private all the money would go to the government which is how it's worked since day 1.. usps turns over any unallocated yearly profits directly to the government since it's a self sustaining government entity and not a profit driven entity by law which is why the governments pushing to make usps even more profitable since they can just leech the profits and usps can't do anything about it. but hey lets ignore the 100's of millions of dollars usps pays fedex yearly just to stay in business to do their airmail service (wish usps would buy them out already) but that's a whole different argument i won't get into.

That's not what is happening. I won't engage with your lies. You can make them up far faster than I can counter them.

that is in fact what is happening but that's the only response you'll get from me since you're doing a shitty job at being a troll.
 
Not being a fan of Trump, it sucks a bit that I see his point. USPS handles 506.4 million pieces of mail per day. 184 billion per year. Increase rates by .05¢ and you increase the income by 9 billion dollars! That puts USPS back in the profit. A lot of income by raising rates by 5 cents. Cant argue that at all. He does have some business sense, even with 6 bankruptcies behind him.
 
I'm going to have to agree, the USPS needs to charge a fair market rate to amazon without subsidy. I would say that at least 50% of my amazon packages are delivered by the USPS.
 
Not being a fan of Trump, it sucks a bit that I see his point. USPS handles 506.4 million pieces of mail per day. 184 billion per year. Increase rates by .05¢ and you increase the income by 9 billion dollars! That puts USPS back in the profit. A lot of income by raising rates by 5 cents. Cant argue that at all. He does have some business sense, even with 6 bankruptcies behind him.

I think 5 cents is reasonable. But Trump says he: "Wants Postal Service to Charge “Much More” for Amazon Shipments". Who knows what, if anything he's really considering. I have two teenage girls who's tweets are DWARFED by the sheer number of the POTUS. I guess we could hope he has a severe medical condition and has to step down, but Pence would be worse. What happened to this country..........................................?
 
I say raise the price of mailing anything so I stop getting all this worthless junk mail.
 
a better idea is to expend the services offered by the USPS to things like basic banking like the English post office offers and offering basic internet
 
Right....
ISIS was well on its way to folding before he took office, those massive tax reductions are massively debt funded and mostly benefit the rich/corps, most of the regs he is cutting were figuratively speaking written in blood, and the previous president got the stock market prices up frequently during much of his 2 terms too.

Nothing to be impressed about in the least. Quite a lot to be disgusted with even if you only look at his handling of Congress and foreign leaders and ignore his tweets and public comments.
 
Privatize the USPS, solved.

Good grief it is not that difficult, you guys go so far into the weeds you get lost.
 
Cuz' applying simple ideology to complex real world issues always works right?

I shall give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're giving a low grade fly by trolling pass in thread.
 
Please, all politics aside, maybe it could be a good thing if a small percentage of tax dollars were to go toward the USPS. We taxpayers are definitely paying for much less worthy causes right now. Maybe I'm wrong. But to me, the USPS is kind of an infrastructure issue that is important to all Americans, that needs to be held up.

Kind of like bridges.

Oops, I went political.

Sorry.
 
Not being a fan of Trump, it sucks a bit that I see his point. USPS handles 506.4 million pieces of mail per day. 184 billion per year. Increase rates by .05¢ and you increase the income by 9 billion dollars! That puts USPS back in the profit. A lot of income by raising rates by 5 cents. Cant argue that at all. He does have some business sense, even with 6 bankruptcies behind him.

I don't get this weird hate for Trump. Do none of you invest in the market?? Or did you all follow the advice of leftists telling you to sell sell sell your kid's college funds when Trump won, saying the market will guarantee tank? My lower-risk conservative investments in the market have increased more than 30% in the past year. Holy hell. I don't care how many restructuring bankruptcies he's had. The market trusts him and common investors like me are reaping the rewards for his stewardship. Hell of a lot better than the last guy.
 
I'm going to have to agree, the USPS needs to charge a fair market rate to amazon without subsidy. I would say that at least 50% of my amazon packages are delivered by the USPS.
Amazon probably pays a fair rate. They do most of the work and drop the packages at the local post offices so the USPS doesn't have to sort and distribute them. USPS just handles last mile.
 
I don't get this weird hate for Trump. Do none of you invest in the market?? Or did you all follow the advice of leftists telling you to sell sell sell your kid's college funds when Trump won, saying the market will guarantee tank? My lower-risk conservative investments in the market have increased more than 30% in the past year. Holy hell. I don't care how many restructuring bankruptcies he's had. The market trusts him and common investors like me are reaping the rewards for his stewardship. Hell of a lot better than the last guy.

Markets trust only one thing, mo money, and the tax cuts are a HUGE windfall to especially the big caps. And ironically, as much as people on both the left and right love to slam Wall Street, holly fuck they are going to make out like bandits, just a decade after they blew up the economy. I'm not complaining though, I work for a big bank and the tax cuts and a regulatory adverse environment is totally what Wall Street wants. But its funny that we have to be reminded of this, when Wall Street gets its way you better watch the fuck out. With so many sitting on fucktons of cash, somebody is going to do something VERY stupid to make mo money and blow something up.

Doesn't really matter the politics of it, its good old boom-speculation-bust capitalism.
 
I don't get this weird hate for Trump. Do none of you invest in the market?? Or did you all follow the advice of leftists telling you to sell sell sell your kid's college funds when Trump won, saying the market will guarantee tank? My lower-risk conservative investments in the market have increased more than 30% in the past year. Holy hell. I don't care how many restructuring bankruptcies he's had. The market trusts him and common investors like me are reaping the rewards for his stewardship. Hell of a lot better than the last guy.
Probably has a lot more to do with Trump as a person, being a fairly open racist, feeling the need to get his 2 cents in on every subject via twitter, etc etc etc. And yes I invest in the market, my conservative account made 9% on the year which is pretty fucking huge, my mildly aggressive one made just over 15% on the year. But this isn't about how much money he's making me, this is about who he is as a person, and he's a pretty horrible person.
 
Probably has a lot more to do with Trump as a person, being a fairly open racist, feeling the need to get his 2 cents in on every subject via twitter, etc etc etc. And yes I invest in the market, my conservative account made 9% on the year which is pretty fucking huge, my mildly aggressive one made just over 15% on the year. But this isn't about how much money he's making me, this is about who he is as a person, and he's a pretty horrible person.

It is a damn shame that the main stream media has this much pull that they are able to form your outlook on the President of the USA, Donald Trump. No, he is not a horrible person nor is he an open racist but hey, just so long as it lets you sleep better at night, eh? The fact that he interjects things is not a issue I have with him because he is not interjecting himself into stuff he has no need to be in. (Think Boston College Professor, Trayvon Martin and many other such things.)
 
Not being a fan of Trump, it sucks a bit that I see his point. USPS handles 506.4 million pieces of mail per day. 184 billion per year. Increase rates by .05¢ and you increase the income by 9 billion dollars! That puts USPS back in the profit. A lot of income by raising rates by 5 cents. Cant argue that at all. He does have some business sense, even with 6 bankruptcies behind him.

Six bankruptcies and 100's of successes.
 
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