I’d doubt few will care except those of us who have the mailed disc version of Netflix (since newer stuff isn’t on streaming) and want to send and receive them on Saturdays.
Apparently trying an end-run around an unaccommodating Congress, the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service says it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to disburse packages six days a week.
In an announcement scheduled for later Wednesday, the service is expected to say the Saturday mail cutback would begin in August and could save $2 billion annually.
The move accentuates one of the agency’s strong points – package delivery has increased by 14 percent since 2010, officials say, while the delivery of letters and other mail has declined with the increasing use of email and other Internet services.
Sounds like a good idea. Most of what I get delivered is junk anyhow.
“We are given no straw, but the slave drivers still demand, ‘Make bricks!’ ”
More evidence that Congress is functionally insane. But what hurts worse is that it’s more evidence that we are slipping as a country, culture, civilization. There has been a postal service in America since before there was a United States. At this rate, how much longer can it survive?
I think you might be blowing this a little out of proportion. What a waste of time, resources and adding pollution, just so we can get latest issue of our favorite magazine or some crap we ordered from china.
I agree. The only mail I seem to get other than the usual junk seems to also be BILLS! And I’m in no hurry to get them. Besides, aren’t UPS and FedEx delivering on Saturday for an extra charge? (Pssst! Let’s not give the USPS any ideas here.)
eBay shoppers will be happy.
People that write letters are dinosaurs like people that write checks.
Hey, my 94 year old Father in-law is no dinosaur, nor is my 75 year old Mom. There are millions of Americans still writing checks to pay monthly bills, and receive statements from their investment brokers. Not everyone is computer literate.
Let’s not forget the hours of pay that the USPS workers will lose. A job with the USPS used to be a great job. Now, your treated like a dog and walked every so often to make sure you are walking thru all the short cuts available. The letter carriers will now have to deliver more mail in less time. Expect more postal workers going postal.
Would a Netflix disk mailer be considered a package?
Why not just stop mail delivery in states where congressional representatives are unsupportive of the USPO?
Good. I think we can do with 3 days per week, given the amount of junk mail received. The only losers would be advertisers – and they can pay more, or go via another delivery service.
Another way would be to outsource the whole bloated operation to a private business like FedEx or UPS.
“outsource the whole bloated operation to a private business like FedEx or UPS”
They don’t want the jellybean grandma letter market. They’re perfectly content skimming the top of the delivery market with packages.
That leaves the USPS to deliver the shit mail.
The question is, do the sheeple consider mail an essential service like it was at one time.
Sure, right after they declare internet access a basic human right and all have it regardless of income. What do you think would cost more, the USPS or free internet to the poor?
That’s always the idiotic slave response. Let’s privatize the USPS. Oh yea, great idea. Why not privatize the military, oh…we already did that. Cheney made a fortune off of that fiasco.
Of course, if the idiots in Congress would just let them raise the price of a stamp to 50 cents, instead of the stupid 1 or 2 cents at a time, they would be fine.
But, no. They’re too busy proclaiming National Used Kleenex Appreciation Day and so forth.
“National Used Kleenex Appreciation Day”
Har!
That’s my favorite drinking day, leave it alone.
I don’t think this is funny at all. “National Used Kleenex Appreciation Day” flaunts kleenex usage in front of all of us that are kleenex challenged.
They should stop delivering bills completely, it would save us billions!
Seems whenever I got some kind of refund in the mail. Whether of taxes, or some product rebate. It always was mailed out, to arrive on Friday or Saturday. That way the sender had at least two days before I could cash it in. Maybe without having the Saturday delivery, this will put a crimp in their evil plan, to gain extra days of interest income. Or make it three days until one can cash a refund check. And four on Federal holidays, like Columbus day.
Frankly, I’d rather they dropped Mondays. Who really wants mail on Mondays? And all the above refunders most be waiting until Wednesday, to mail out those checks. I’d be surprised if any major corporation does all that much paper mailing on Mondays, in America. The executives still have their heads on the Sunday golf game, to dictate letters to their secretaries.
Interest Income? Are you living in the 1970s?
One of the most amusing documents delivered by the Post Office is the American Express high yield saving account flyer. It pays a huge .9 percent.
Even more amusing is the bar graph on the flyer showing .9 to be many times higher than the .8 every one else pays. Apparently the base point of the graph is .79 percent.
I pay everything online and rarely get surprises. I’d opt out of mail if I could.
So I just get junk mail. I haven’t bought a stamp in 6 years. Other than mailing back Netflix movies in the past, I’ve mailed something out maybe 5-6 times in that same period of time.
The post office is mostly packages and junk mail these days and out of touch governments/corporations that like to mail stuff out of habit.
You anti USPO idiot are victims yourself. The USPO is a broad based honorable employment program that actually returns a service. You so called “business men:” whose gonna buy your products if they need two jobs to maintain a blue collar existence.
So short sighted.
Just cutting your own throats over some kind of percieved anti government ideology AS IF====> the government weren’t us.
Idiot Hooman Beings.
You are creating MORE THAN the death spiral race to the bottom, its the race to oblivion. Pull your head out of your ass and don’t make life harder than it is for someone trying to be a good citizen on $40K per year.
How stupid can YOU be?
Maybe in 5-7 years the rubber band will snap back and some of the ideas from 1880-1960 will come back into favor.
Like protectionism/tariffs, quality of life concerns, worker’s right and how maybe if we value humans as humans instead of worker bees to be abused/dictated to.
Still, I think the social fabric back then was facilitated by WWI and WWII where all the men got drafted and bonded together and created a sense of citizenry and brotherhood and common cause.
Today, we have severe social stratification.
But in any possible future, I don’t see the Post Office being a thing of the future except for packages.
Ernest Hemingway isn’t writing letter overseas these days and neither is anyone else.
The Post Office is a “blast from the past” that doesn’t serve much more purpose than the blacksmith or a milk man does in the modern world.
You touch on a fair issue: the USPO should flex to the volume of business it has. It should be run as a business and not as a target for Congressional Flacks.
But should be is defined by not being. Once again, we are simply doing it to ourselves: Crowing while we cut our own throats.
Society is being stratified. You see it in the unemployment rate of College Grads vs High School vs Drop Outs. Just what are the bottom half of the market supposed to do?
Why not have them deliver the mail? Much better than having them breaking into my house.
Or is it just me?
| Why not have them deliver the mail? Much
| better than having them breaking into my
| house.
I’m not sure having kids deliver the mail would keep them from breaking into your house.
Might make it more likely …
I suppose I could be a blogging butt fuck who doesn’t know the difference between USPO and USPS!
The USPS can evolve to be part of Obamacare. The newly licensed medical-postal worker can deliver mail but also check up on the aging sheeple population and maybe administer morphine when needed. This could go somewhere.
some OF YOU MAY know this..
FEDX takes a week to deliver a package at $??
The USPS can send a priority package, for about $8 in <3days..generally, over nite..
Iv had companies send a package USPS free when I purchase $60+ in merchandise.. and its here in 2-3 days. INCLUDING the weekends.
The rest of the companies have LESS people, and COST MORE, and take longer. They SEEM to making TONS more money.
Iv suggested to the USPS to raise the Price of sending CRAP to my box.. but its pre-sorted and labeled and 1/2 the work is done for THEM.. so they dont.
Wow! You either don’t realize the markup of the crap you’re buying or don’t realize the horrible job the USPS usually does.
Have you even BEEN to a USPS post office lately? It’s worse than the DMV! On average there are 10 counters with only one open. And that one counter is almost always staffed by someone who takes 5 minute breaks every 5 minutes! They even removed all of their vending machines thinking it would somehow save money too. VENDING MACHINES! The only way you can now get postage stamps without a credit card (or online) is to actually talk to one of these surly sub human drones. And that’s assuming they speak ENGLISH!
So for me, I’ll will stick to getting my postage stamps from an ATM or at the grocery store. I’ll also try and support my local economy by trying to make my purchases at a local retailer too. The extra PENNIES I spend at the local brick and mortar stores seems to help keep deserving people EMPLOYED too!
They even removed all of their vending machines…
Not at my post office.
Reality doesn’t seem to be very evenly distributed…
MALE..
Umm,
Ever tried to goto the UPS office??
TRY and find it within 20 miles of your home..
THE POST OFFICE DELIVERS..
Go to their site and have FREE BOXES SENT..
Markup on my prices I GET?? with free delivery?
GO to the store and find 5HTP..its around $10..
I get it around $6 as well as a few other products, and keep the price above $60 and I get free shipping.. I AM very frugal.
PS..You can ORDER, PRE-POST MARKED-PAID envelopes OFF the net, and they will be delivered..FREE..
Actually that makes sense.
Wasting fossil fuel to deliver a piece of paper made from trees just doesn’t cut it anymore.
I feel sorry for all the folks who don’t want to use a computer, but that’s evolution.
Wellllll, for all the fossil fuel burned maintaining all the servers, switches, routers and air-conditioners to keep all this crap cool, somehow I get the feeling that the mail this infrastructure is displacing wasn’t using that much delivery fuel.
As for raising the price of delivery services, not a bad idea. I’ve suggested the same thing for the airlines and their “wonderful” service. Put the services back and raise those ticket prices, then flying would become a dignified experience again. A smaller business probably, but….
Those servers are a shared cost, they deliver all kind of stuff 24/7
Granted, most of the stuff they deliver is junk, but the increase rate of communication among people has brought us all the things we enjoy today. When was the last time you paid for direct dialing fees for an international call?
I haven’t gone thru the numbers but I suspect that the cost (in terms of fossil fuel) to deliver, let’s say, an online invoice are much much cheaper than the equivalent of a paper-based invoice.
If it wasn’t companies would still be sending paper-based stuff around, as they too are looking for cheaper ways to do business.
You may want to reconsider pissing off the USPS. I bet you didn’t know that certain members of the postal inspectors branch are ARMED! So maybe this shut down is a test to see if “they” can limit or close down some of our other armed services too. Hmmmm…
(I can just sense that comment sounding like a bullhorn to some people: “Calling all looney libs! Calling all looney libs! Someone mentioned guns! Someone mentioned guns! It’s time once again to “flame” the tea-publican bastard for wanting to remain armed or assert Constitutional rights that we, the enlightened ones have already decided he should not have.“)
I’ve always thought the idea of getting mail on a Saturday is uncivilised. Nobody should have to wake up to bills at the weekend.
Don’t worry guys, the checks in the mail.
What this is is blackmail. They want Congress to give them more money, so they figure they will threaten the end of Saturday mail delivery and the closing of local post offices to get constituents to complain to their Congressman. Except it’s not as effective anymore. Amtrak does the same thing.
I don’t see how they can keep doing Saturday deliveries. The reason they can do a low charge for deliveries is because it piggybacks on the regular mail delivery. Now it looks like the Saturday deliveries are going to be an added cost to be shared across all deliveries.
Actually the USPS is doing a gambit to stop delivery on saturday even though they’re mandated to do so.
Congress may very well actually be forced to do something and modify the law to allow them to end saturday deliveries.
Remember when there used to be actual cogent commentary to be found here?
Now every argument has devolved into shouts of “treason!”, “jack-booted union thugs!”, “they’re cummin fer ar GUNZ!!!”, “asshole!”, “asshole licker!”
Ugh
I think you went too far with “asshole licker.” I don’t think Pedro’s obsession with Dallas has reached that level yet.
The USPO is only $16 billion in the hole. Why stop at only saving $2 billion?
Now if they could work on not delivering mail 8 days out of the week, they’d break even.
🙂
Thats a funny, and a good one!
Is that 16 Billion in the hole artificial or real? Meaning is that including the artificial healthcare funding requirement or not?
As a fiscal conservative, I think programs should pay for themselves. As a social liberal, I think programs that pay for themselves and give good honest employment should be encouraged–even if there are better (ie less human intensive) ways to do it.
Et viola!
http://tinyurl.com/d9jp8cv
When did the USPO start delivering mail?
I wished they would stop, the USPS is annoyingly reliable at delivering bills to my mailbox.
No institution is more American than the Post Office, so it is sad to watch it go down for the third time. Unfortunately its failure has been a long time coming. It is the original “too big to fail” outfit. Their “we are the only ones allowed to sell stamps” attitude has turned them into the premier junk delivery service in the nation. We can’t afford to keep them around for Auld Lang Sine. Either restructure them or cut bait altogether. My apologies to Ben Franklin.
How can we “not afford” them if they support themselves?
We can always revise the laws to allow the USPS to legally deliver guns to peoples doors, then the 2nd amendment freaks will defend the Postal System to the death!
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress “To establish Post Offices and post Roads”.
Those who feel so strongly about the 2nd Ammendment should know others feel as strongly about the god-given right, from our forefather, to have a decent post office and service. Right there in Article #1.
Good post.
Remember that many here are Cafeteria Christians whereby you pick and choose what parts of the bible are to be considered AOK. So, as you might expect, the same are often see the Constitution in the same point of reference.
Nothing wrong with making sure Post Office doesn’t end up like so many other entities swamped by pension costs. GM, Chrysler, California, Illinois
Is there any other fish than red herring in the ocean of shit you swim in?
Of course, all benefits should be costed and paid for. NOT used as an excuse to shut down a group of people presumed to vote more Dumbo than Puke.
Puke Party >>> only about 3 steps away from Oligarchy. Doing all they can to purge their own party and the electorate of any who disagree with their Luddite Perversions.
Yeah lets just ignore the fact GM quit making cars people actually wanted……lets blame the workers instead, its always the good sign of a quality manager.
They didn’t have money to invest in R&D when they had to pay thousands of dollars in costs per car for people who didn’t even work at GM anymore. Costs not borne by Toyota.
Congress requires USPS to pre-pay future retirement benefits, NOT because congress is worried about paying postal retirees. Congress sees that as free money and spends it now. What do you think, congress puts those prepayments into a savings account?
If you really need to have a letter delivered on Saturday, then ship it inside of a package. Problem solved.
If your letter is urgent and you need a quick reply, use e-mail.
If your letter is extremely urgent and you need an instant reply, send a text message.
Snail mail is so 20th century.
Ahhhh, bureaucracy at its best. 🙂
No, that is when the Post Office sues companies for using UPS or FedEx. USPS has a legal monopoly.
As Adam Curry states “when the govt runs something it just sucks”.
Like the military?
RAISE THE PRICE OF SPAM MAIL..
Now some in the US Congress are saying “not so fast Post Office”. They need to vote on this Saturday closure. Probably worried their parties’ campaign funding drives, by mail, will face a 16% reduction in revenue. If they can only mail out five days a week.
When all other uses for the postal mail, have been replaced by electronic mail. Politicians will still be using the old way, to badger up to fund their careers, via some party affiliation. Because the “other party” will ruin America, if they’re not reelected. BS.
Yup, it’s blackmail.