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this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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republicans are so fucking stupid
USPS also lost a major revenue source
Which the stupid Republicans will use to continue to try to privatize something that should never have been privatized and should never be privatized The Republicans are the Nazis now and they need to be stopped
Education? Medical care? The electrical grid? Oh, no you’re talking about privatizing the post office. It gets so confusing since Republicans want to privatize well, everything.
That's probably part of the plan. They want the post office gone to make room for private companies. Fuck all the people that live in remote areas where it isn't profitable to have mail I guess.
Isn't that funny, that the rural, deep red areas will get shafted even deeper without access to services
As I live in one of those areas (though I don't vote like them)... no, not really.
Chinese packages are a net negative for the post office, you can probably find articles about that from Trump's first term.
The Postal Service is a service.
Just because it's a service doesn't make the comment you are replying to any less correct. Cancelling inbound chinese shipments is negatively affecting quality of service, NOT revenue
Just because it's a service doesn't mean it has to operate at a loss. Water is a service too, but you can't bankrupt the water company by using 300x as much water.
Here’s a crazy take, maybe water shouldn’t be privately owned.
Whether it's public or private has no real bearing on my point though. Water consumption is priced to cover the cost of delivering the water. That isn't the case in international shipping, the more packages from China for the USPS, the more money they lose.
the entire premise of your "point" is mind-bogglingly wrong. the USPS doesn't make money, it costs money, just like any other org run by the government
how much revenue is the US military raking in? or are they "operating at a loss" too?
talking about ending the USPS because it's "losing money" is the most bone-headed bullshit take on anything, ever. period
Since the Postal Reorganization Act came into effect in 1971, the USPS has been mandated to be self-financing and rely solely on revenue from stamps and package deliveries to support itself. In 1982, postal stamps were changed to be categorized as products rather than a form of taxation, and since then, the Postal Service has no longer received taxpayer funding.
Indeed. The biggest con of the cons was getting everyone talking about government as if it should model itself after business (with the implicit, built-in assumption that business is an unqualified good, no less, so it's two-fer).
Business are run as private tyrannies. Government should definitely not be operated like a business.
Services can still cost money. Utilities, such as water, cost money but if the government is running them they do not need to produce profit.
Republicans framing the postal service as a failed business venture is purposeful.
We should not be allowing cheap crap that serves no purpose to be a drain on tax dollars lmfao
The USPS was never intended to turn a profit. It’s not a business. Its entire purpose is to deliver mail to every American, regardless of where they’re located. Making that profitable was never realistic nor necessary for a government service.
It doesn't have to profit, but it also doesn't have to subsidize incoming packages from China.
How are they subsidizing them?
The UN Postal Union sets guidelines for international mail that dictates developing countries shouldn't have to pay full price to send mail to developed countries. Basically if it costs $30 to ship something from a developing country, they would charge $20 and the destination country would pay for the shortfall (dollar values not real). China was a much smaller economy when this agreement was drafted.
The US renegotiated this agreement with the United postal union in 2019/2020 but there were still come compromises made - while the amount of subsidization is minimal compared to 10 years ago, USPS still allegedly eats some losses on every package from China.
Basically Trump is mad because the deal he personally negotiated 5 years ago wasn't good enough. Same thing that happened with his trade agreement with Canada
You're ignoring the fact that the person who ordered the thing is in America, and are acting like this is a subsidy for China.
Not everything is zero-sum.
Yeah, and the person who ordered the thing from China is getting their shipping cost subsidized by the American taxpayer, while someone who orders something domestically has to pay for 100% of their own shipping. It literally is a subsidy for China
for fucks sake this entire conversation is bullshit. the whining about pittance of tax dollars spent on packages from china is entirely designed to make you stop paying attention to the absolutely obscene mountains of tax moneys going directly to american billionaires in the form of tax cuts, bailouts, and yes--fucking subsidies
honestly gtfo with this bitching about the USPS
Congratulations, you cracked the code on how public services work.
You should try scrolling up and looking at what the context of the discussion is. Someone asked what was being subsidized, I answered, you swooped in with a bunch of self righteous off-topic remarks.
Hurr durr but why should I have to pay for public education if I don't have any kids?
I'm sorry, what do you think is happening here?
I don't know why you got down voted because it's 100% true. NPR did a fairly good episode on it: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-postal-illuminati
Edit: To summarize, there's an international org (UPU) that controls the amount postal services can charge each other to deliver mail/parcels. The current due is below what it costs to actually deliver a parcel, so a package from China actually costs the USPS money. That cost gets passed on as higher domestic fees, leading to a situation where a shipper is charged ~5x more to ship something domestically compared to what a company in China is charged to ship to the US.
People don't like when something Trump does could have good reasons. It does seem accidental in this case, but it doesn't make it not true.
How about you wake up and stop painting shit in gold?
Trump doing some good (which I don't even think is the case here) is purely incidental to serving his own self interests.
Good thing the USPS is a public service and not a business, and the fact that it's not expected to turn a profit is actually a feature and not a bug.
Interesting.
It looks like that's been changed since the NPR broadcast.
https://redstagfulfillment.com/universal-postal-union-treaty/
Everything they do is a "net negative"! My company's IT and HR departments don't generate any revenue at all...
And cost centers constantly struggle with funding.
How did Bezos let this happen? Didn’t he buy his way into the administration for reasons?