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]

9 minutes ago, Lipdrag said:

 

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

That seems about par for the course. Basic math is hard.

[fishbane]

1 hour ago, Paul158 said:

That seems about par for the course. Basic math is hard.

It's a joke, but it also likely isn't as straightforward as it seems.  Do you only want headcount cut by 50%?  That could result in payroll not being cut by 50% either because low earners are cut or because part time employees are let go so the hours being charged are not cut by 50%.  Also the retained employees could end up working overtime as they may have more responsibility after the 50% layoffs.

Willie kind of made this mistake with the USPS earlier in this thread.  He was complaining about this USPS saying they hired unnecessary employees and called it socialism.  Setting aside that he was totally wrong about the the timing of the hires the number he was pointing at was career hires, however the total number of USPS employees and hours worked by those employees fell during the relevant time period. 

[wrestlingguy]

27 minutes ago, fishbane said:

It's a joke, but it also likely isn't as straightforward as it seems.  Do you only want headcount cut by 50%?  That could result in payroll not being cut by 50% either because low earners are cut or because part time employees are let go so the hours being charged are not cut by 50%.  Also the retained employees could end up working overtime as they may have more responsibility after the 50% layoffs.

Willie kind of made this mistake with the USPS earlier in this thread.  He was complaining about this USPS saying they hired unnecessary employees and called it socialism.  Setting aside that he was totally wrong about the the timing of the hires the number he was pointing at was career hires, however the total number of USPS employees and hours worked by those employees fell during the relevant time period. 

Honest question. What is the downside of getting rid of the federal department of education completely? Why do we have a state DOE and a federal DOE? 

[fishbane]

5 minutes ago, wrestlingguy said:

Honest question. What is the downside of getting rid of the federal department of education completely? Why do we have a state DOE and a federal DOE? 

I'm not sure completely.  I think they providing federal funding to state programs and loans and grants for students pursuing hire education.  Anyone that received a federal Pell grant or stafford loan those are through the DOE.

If you don't think any of that is worthwhile it was the threat of eliminating federal funding to state and private higher education institutions that Trump was using to persuade them from eliminating DEI from admissions.  That threat wouldnt have much bite if the DOE is eliminated.  

[jross]

On 3/11/2025 at 1:00 PM, fishbane said:

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

Haha.  I loved that quip...  but would USPS privatized competition force them to cut the junk mail deliveries or lose me?  Would it influence more physical mail to become digitized?

 

FWIW

• https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ (Opt-Out from receiving Credit Firm Offers for Five Years)
• https://www.dmachoice.org/index.php (Reduce new customer prospect physical mail for Ten Years)
• https://www.donotcall.gov/ (Opt out of telemarketer calls)

[wrestlingguy]

6 minutes ago, fishbane said:

I'm not sure completely.  I think they providing federal funding to state programs and loans and grants for students pursuing hire education.  Anyone that received a federal Pell grant or stafford loan those are through the DOE.

If you don't think any of that is worthwhile it was the threat of eliminating federal funding to state and private higher education institutions that Trump was using to persuade them from eliminating DEI from admissions.  That threat wouldnt have much bite if the DOE is eliminated.  

Good point. I didn't think about college, etc having to do with the federal DOE. I always go straight to the local school districts. The quality of education has gone down since the DOE was founded and no child left behind now has resulted in at least two individuals lately that I have read about suing the school districts because they have graduated without knowing how to read.

[Paul158]

44 minutes ago, wrestlingguy said:

Honest question. What is the downside of getting rid of the federal department of education completely? Why do we have a state DOE and a federal DOE? 

Then you have County DOE's. Then in some States each town has its DOE or School district. There is an awful lot of overlap or redundancy.

[fishbane]

2 hours ago, jross said:

Haha.  I loved that quip...  but would USPS privatized competition force them to cut the junk mail deliveries or lose me?  Would it influence more physical mail to become digitized?

 

FWIW

• https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ (Opt-Out from receiving Credit Firm Offers for Five Years)
• https://www.dmachoice.org/index.php (Reduce new customer prospect physical mail for Ten Years)
• https://www.donotcall.gov/ (Opt out of telemarketer calls)

I don't think privatization would decrease mailed ads.  It might because the price would go up and then it would make for fewer businesses.  On the other hand, I am pretty sure the USPS uses junk mail in much the same way Intermat uses ads.  Delivering the ads keeps the price down of everything else. Every door direct mail doesn't really add much cost to the USPS operations - they are going to every door anyway and its not like that stuff is being transported across the country.  I think EDDM is profitable for the USPS.  If I'm wrong and they lose money on it then it will disappear.

I suspect the average American loses more time dealing with online ads than junk mail.  Junk mail doesn't waste more than a couple minutes/week of my time.

The US government also needs to use mail to contact residents.  Right now that is free or at lease very low marginal cost.  Privatize it and the IRS, SSA, Medicare, ect will be paying to send mail through Fedex, UPS, or whoever buys the USPS to a large fraction of Americans.  But maybe DOGE will cut costs and have the IRS switch to email.  Might as well outsource their call center too for additional savings.  Nothing could go wrong with that, right?

[fishbane]

2 hours ago, wrestlingguy said:

Good point. I didn't think about college, etc having to do with the federal DOE. I always go straight to the local school districts. The quality of education has gone down since the DOE was founded and no child left behind now has resulted in at least two individuals lately that I have read about suing the school districts because they have graduated without knowing how to read.

I don't believe a majority of the Department of Education's budget goes to K-12.  Federal student work $$ is another way it goes to colleges.  The DOE processes the FAFSA and many programs that go through it.  Eliminating it would have a huge impact on colleges and probably college athletics.

I think Trump was able to ban trans athletes from woman's NCAA sports by threatening to cut federal funding.  The president does not have the power to do this directly.  I am sure many other agencies (DOD, DOE, NSF, NASA, ect) give research grants to universities, but a bulk of the funding probably comes from programs from the department of education.  

[jross]

1 hour ago, fishbane said:

I don't think privatization would decrease mailed ads.  It might because the price would go up and then it would make for fewer businesses.  On the other hand, I am pretty sure the USPS uses junk mail in much the same way Intermat uses ads.  Delivering the ads keeps the price down of everything else. Every door direct mail doesn't really add much cost to the USPS operations - they are going to every door anyway and its not like that stuff is being transported across the country.  I think EDDM is profitable for the USPS.  If I'm wrong and they lose money on it then it will disappear.

I suspect the average American loses more time dealing with online ads than junk mail.  Junk mail doesn't waste more than a couple minutes/week of my time.

The US government also needs to use mail to contact residents.  Right now that is free or at lease very low marginal cost.  Privatize it and the IRS, SSA, Medicare, ect will be paying to send mail through Fedex, UPS, or whoever buys the USPS to a large fraction of Americans.  But maybe DOGE will cut costs and have the IRS switch to email.  Might as well outsource their call center too for additional savings.  Nothing could go wrong with that, right?

Could advertisers pay Amazon to slip junk mail into packages? Amazon avoids that reputation hit. I’d pay $100 annually to ditch physical junk mail, but even 10 million people like me couldn’t replace the revenue USPS gets from it. I don’t even check my mail... it’s just noise since I pay bills online.

[fishbane]

5 hours ago, jross said:

Could advertisers pay Amazon to slip junk mail into packages? Amazon avoids that reputation hit. I’d pay $100 annually to ditch physical junk mail, but even 10 million people like me couldn’t replace the revenue USPS gets from it. I don’t even check my mail... it’s just noise since I pay bills online.

They could.  Many companies put ads for other companies/services in their packages.  If you place an order with Kohl's you are likely to receive a couple printed ads for other companies in the package.  I think Hello Fresh and Doordash are common inserts in Kohl's packages.  I think Amazon has done something similar before.  They have also put ads on the outside of their boxes.  If they are no longer doing either of these I don't think it's to avoid the reputation hit of sending junk mail.

Amazon loves ads.  They sell their devices (fire tablets, kindle e-readers, and fire tv sticks and devices) with an ad supported model.  The device will show the user ads on the lock screen and is sold at a lower price point.   Amazon has ads on their home page.  Amazon sells ads that play during their streaming service.  I don't think Amazon thinks all that is okay, but putting ads inserts in their packages is too intrusive.  It's either because they can't compete with the USPS in physical ad delivery, their other ad forms are more popular/effective/cost effective, or they fear that doing this could delay order fulfillment which is their priority.  They may also struggle to find advertisers for whom they are not competitors.  Amazon is so big and has their hands in so many places that their competitors are legion.  For example it wouldn't really make sense for them to put Doordash ads in packages like Kohl's because they already partnered with Grubhub.  All Prime members get Grubhub+ for free.