How in the world did the government spending get so far off the tracks? In less than a month Elon will and his 20 year olds will pry 1 trillion dollars out of the politicians cold dead hands. will

[Paul158]

3 hours ago, WrestlingRasta said:

This.  Very much this.  I don’t think I even check my mail more than once….maybe twice a week.  
 

But let’s be sure not to (and I’m not at all saying you are, I’m just bringing this up) but lets not start to rag on the postal workers, who are only working under the policies they are directed.   We’ve seen this play out before with people (on here) ragging on teachers….because we don’t like the policies of the DOE  

 

You are correct. I'm not ragging on the postal workers. Just the postal system. 

[mspart]

2 hours ago, fishbane said:

Mail delivery once a week is an awful idea.  Today you can mail a letter and it gets delivered within two days to a large part of the country.  This would significantly slow that down.  It would also cripple the USPS package service.  UPS and FedEx delivery 5 days a week.  Why would anyone use the USPS when it could take a week or more?  No such thing as next day or expedited service.

This brings up a good point.  Why would we continue to fund the postal service that can't keep a budget and where there is competition that does?   The only reason is subsidized and worse service.  If USPS had to make money, they would be much more expensive. 

mspart

[red viking]

Step 1: underfund a govt program

Step 2: blame it on the program when they have budget problems. 

 

[wrestlingguy]

3 minutes ago, mspart said:

This brings up a good point.  Why would we continue to fund the postal service that can't keep a budget and where there is competition that does?   The only reason is subsidized and worse service.  If USPS had to make money, they would be much more expensive. 

mspart

From my experience the only reason to use the USPS is it is cheaper. I never really thought about why it's cheaper.

PS-the USPS lost my passport so I go out of my way to not use them if at all possible.

[fishbane]

1 hour ago, mspart said:

This brings up a good point.  Why would we continue to fund the postal service that can't keep a budget and where there is competition that does?   The only reason is subsidized and worse service.  If USPS had to make money, they would be much more expensive. 

mspart

Because it's a public service and allows for businesses to do business and connects people. If USPS had to make money they wouldn't deliver to everybody and wouldn't visit every house every day like Fedex, UPS, ect.  Postal treaties for international mail wouldn't work.  USPS delivers international mail essentially for free.

For years and years Americans have found value in the postal service and I don't see that changing anytime soon.  USPS being subsidized with congressional appropriations is nothing new.

 

[Gene Mills Fan]

6 minutes ago, fishbane said:

Because it's a public service and allows for businesses to do business and connects people. If USPS had to make money they wouldn't deliver to everybody and wouldn't visit every house every day like Fedex, UPS, ect.  Postal treaties for international mail wouldn't work.  USPS delivers international mail essentially for free.

For years and years Americans have found value in the postal service and I don't see that changing anytime soon.  USPS being subsidized with congressional appropriations is nothing new.

 

Interesting  I had a hunch!   1995 ebay started on line trading needing package delivery.  Early 2000 Amazon started offering other than book items and maybe their preferrred shipping methods??? 

[mspart]

3 hours ago, fishbane said:

Because it's a public service and allows for businesses to do business and connects people. If USPS had to make money they wouldn't deliver to everybody and wouldn't visit every house every day like Fedex, UPS, ect.  Postal treaties for international mail wouldn't work.  USPS delivers international mail essentially for free.

For years and years Americans have found value in the postal service and I don't see that changing anytime soon.  USPS being subsidized with congressional appropriations is nothing new.

 

Hey fishy,  this is a good post.   Well reasoned.   USPS is a government service that is subsidized so that it can reach essentially everyone that wants to be reached.  That is certainly a consideration.   In the past, they had a monopoly on postal services.   That is no longer the case.  It is a service that benefits everyone for sure.

mspart

[fishbane]

4 hours ago, Gene Mills Fan said:

Interesting  I had a hunch!   1995 ebay started on line trading needing package delivery.  Early 2000 Amazon started offering other than book items and maybe their preferrred shipping methods??? 

The big downward spike starting near 2007 is in part due to a law that required the USPS to prefund retirement benefits for a period of 10 years.  This was not required before that and retirement benefits were just paid out of the operating budget previously.  It was the only agency required to do this.  I think they made the payments in full for the first 3 or so years and then had to start defaulting on the prefunding.  Eventually this requirement was repealed in 2022.  If not for this requirement they would have had a surplus for several more years.

Today Amazon delivery 90% of the stuff I order themselves and largely don't use Fedex, UPS, or the USPS.  They've sent me a handful of items through USPS and UPS in the past year, but none via Fedex.  Ten or so years ago before they started ramping up their own delivery fleet I used to get a lot of stuff delivered from Amazon through Lasership.  I believe that company goes by Ontrac today.  In any case I think Amazon has stopped using them at least in my area.

[mspart]

There is a huge warehouse in Maple Valley WA and 20 Amazon trucks in a row can be seen driving down the Maple Valley Highway in the morning.   Huge effort.  I'd say 1/3 are electric. 

mspart

[Paul158]

9 hours ago, red viking said:

Step 1: underfund a govt program

Step 2: blame it on the program when they have budget

100 billion dollars with their pension. 535,000 employees.

[RockLobster]

16 hours ago, jross said:

but… but…

midwit

You make a post - that has the sole purpose of calling me a silly name. Nothing useful at all.

Way to go, champ.

[fishbane]

9 hours ago, Paul158 said:

100 billion dollars with their pension. 535,000 employees.

The FERS pension calculation is very reasonable.  The calculation is 1.1% of the average of the top three earning years(not including overtime) times the number of years of service.  Employees hired after 2014 contribute 4.4% of their pay to the plan. Unless someone received a significant salary bump late in their career their own contributions should cover most of the benefits.   

[red viking]

40 minutes ago, fishbane said:

The FERS pension calculation is very reasonable.  The calculation is 1.1% of the average of the top three earning years(not including overtime) times the number of years of service.  Employees hired after 2014 contribute 4.4% of their pay to the plan. Unless someone received a significant salary bump late in their career their own contributions should cover most of the benefits.   

Yah; it's not an extravagant pension by any means. Most of the fat cats in the private sector get something more lavish, and yah, it appears to be self-funded. 

[jross]

8 hours ago, RockLobster said:

Way to go, champ.

[fishbane]

1 hour ago, red viking said:

Yah; it's not an extravagant pension by any means. Most of the fat cats in the private sector get something more lavish, and yah, it appears to be self-funded. 

From the pension perspective if I were an employee and needed to pay any more or received any less I'd just assume invest the 4.4% or whatever it is.  The retirement prefunding that was hamstringing the USPS prior to the 2022 repeal was related to medical benefits more than pensions.

I don't really see many pensions at all in the private sector.  Maybe at the c level they have sweet retirement benefits.  I more often see out of control pensions from local/city/municipal/state police.  The top three years thing is similar although some places it could be top year or top 5, but the % is way more (70-80%) and the calculation often includes overtime.  A USPS employee couldn't work enough years to get 70-80% and these guys get it after 20-30 years.  More over places with the top 3 or 1 year calculation that include overtime.  This can be exploited as often overtime is assigned with priority to seniority - if two officers want to work the same OT shift the more senior officer gets it.  Officers near retirement can rack up tons of OT resulting in lifetime pensions in excess of the base salary.

[red viking]

3 minutes ago, fishbane said:

From the pension perspective if I were an employee and needed to pay any more or received any less I'd just assume invest the 4.4% or whatever it is.  The retirement prefunding that was hamstringing the USPS prior to the 2022 repeal was related to medical benefits more than pensions.

I don't really see many pensions at all in the private sector.  Maybe at the c level they have sweet retirement benefits.  I more often see out of control pensions from local/city/municipal/state police.  The top three years thing is similar although some places it could be top year or top 5, but the % is way more (70-80%) and the calculation often includes overtime.  A USPS employee couldn't work enough years to get 70-80% and these guys get it after 20-30 years.  More over places with the top 3 or 1 year calculation that include overtime.  This can be exploited as often overtime is assigned with priority to seniority - if two officers want to work the same OT shift the more senior officer gets it.  Officers near retirement can rack up tons of OT resulting in lifetime pensions in excess of the base salary.

Yah; it's the 401K in the pvt sector, but employers typically put money into it. You gotta look at the big picture to see if this is fair or not. TOTAL compensation. Federal workers get a little less, on average, than pvt sector workers with the same experience and education. They probably work fewer hours on average though, so I think it evens out. I see a ton of govt workers, federal though local, leave for higher paying jobs in the pvt sector. 

The people typically complaining about lavish govt paychecks and/or benefits typically don't want a govt job. Reason is that it doesn't pay enough for them. 

Edited yesterday at 03:05 PM by red viking

[Husker_Du]

23 hours ago, red viking said:

Step 1: underfund a govt program

Step 2: blame it on the program when they have budget problems. 

 

it's overfunded. that's the point.

it's probably just a product of changing times. less people use snail mail....according to their own data.

at minimum it needs a revamp or just privatize it. 

there's not a good reason to have an entire federal program when 65% of their volume (again, by their own metrics), are ads for what's on special at your local grocery stores. 

[Saylors_Tiny_Willie]

https://newrepublic.com/article/192609/trump-tesla-musk-unpopularity-shows-weakness

[fishbane]

35 minutes ago, Husker_Du said:

it's overfunded. that's the point.

it's probably just a product of changing times. less people use snail mail....according to their own data.

at minimum it needs a revamp or just privatize it. 

there's not a good reason to have an entire federal program when 65% of their volume (again, by their own metrics), are ads for what's on special at your local grocery stores. 

Lol.  Yes privatize it like Intermat then 65% of the USPS website can be taken up by ads too!

Edited yesterday at 06:06 PM by fishbane

[Caveira]

1 hour ago, fishbane said:

Lol.  Yes privatize it like Intermat then 65% of the USPS website can be taken up by ads too!

Ads on this site has anything yo do with the government in any way how?    
 

I do agree the ads suck pretty bad …. FWIW.  

[fishbane]

57 minutes ago, Caveira said:

Ads on this site has anything yo do with the government in any way how?    

Just amusement at the irony of a man who pays his bills by serving unwanted ads complaining about the USPS delivering unwanted ads.

[Caveira]

1 minute ago, fishbane said:

Just amusement at the irony of a man who pays his bills by serving unwanted ads complaining about the USPS delivering unwanted ads.

Much funnier now that I get the joke !    Tks 

[Saylors_Tiny_Willie]

[1032004]

On 3/10/2025 at 5:33 AM, Husker_Du said:

based on what?

'delivery points' are homes/businesses. 

that graph doesn't include the 192k they just hired in DEC.

this is proof you'll bend yourself in knots trying to make something say what you want it to.

the USPS is inefficient, bloated, and archaic. all the data confirms it. 

Based on the fact that “package volume” was separated out from “mail volume” in the link you shared…

I’m not arguing that they’re “efficient,” I’d be on board with reducing the number of mail delivery days (just keep in mind this likely would impact Amazon packages as well).  I’m more putting the % change numbers into context and pointing out that the actual employees have more work to do than prior years due to more houses to go to and more packages.  Delivering a few less letters per house doesn’t impact their workload.

As @fishbane noted, much of the “data” you cited is incorrect.   C’mon Willie, you should know better than to just believe anonymous Twitter users and random AI summaries.

[Lipdrag]

On 2/11/2025 at 8:08 PM, Caveira said:

What specifically does the dept of education do?  And are you telling me a a 30/40/50 year old federal gov run department is efficiently?
 

The US Department of Education's (ED) budget for fiscal year (FY) 2024 was $268 billion

 

Babylon Bee comes through again.

 

 

https://babylonbee.com/news/layoffs-delayed-as-dept-of-education-officials-unable-to-calculate-how-many-employees-fifty-percent-would-be