Posted on 01/25/2013 12:19:11 PM PST by SMGFan
It’s a brand new year but already the cash-strained United States Postal Service is showing that it’s feeling the financial heat that kept zapping it in 2012. Starting on Sunday, the price of a first-class stamp will go from $0.45 to $0.46 as we were warned last year. Post card stamps will also rise a penny to $0.33. Sure, it’s only a penny, but it’s a penny you don’t have to pay on Saturday that you do on Sunday.
Of course, we’re fans of Forever Stamps, which you can buy now and use no matter how much a regular postage stamp goes up in price, so perhaps today is a good time to stock up on those.
Letters you send off to international friends or family are rising even more to $1.10. It used to only cost $0.85 to mail letters to Canada and Mexico and $1.05 for other international destinations. Overall, notes CNNMoney, all kinds of shipping services will cost 4% more on average.
(Excerpt) Read more at consumerist.com ...
Live ammunition has never been mailable.
“Unlike the other, very fine, package delivery outfits, the USPS does have to run their full route every day and that of course makes them more vulnerable to gas increases than a company which can just target those addresses where deliveries are required.”
Nonsense! Every day, UPS and FedEX are on our street making deliveries Along with Ontrac. The USPS also comes by in their morphodite Jeep to deliver the small stuff and the mail. The USPS isn’t loosing the game because they “have to make a complete run” each day, they are loosing because they have a bunch of looser minority union employees who do as little as they can, and retire on pensions that are way too expensive. They have designed themselves not to be competitive. A friend of mine worked for the USPS when he went to college. They gave him a route that “the union leaders” expected would take him all day. He did in by noon which pissed of those same union leaders who made it very clear that he needed to slow down or something might happen to him. So every day he did his route and then went home and studied or took a nap until it was time to return the Jeep and punch out.
And until very recently they were the main money-making department of the federal government, funding other departments. Think of what else the government provides as a true service that makes money? None I can think of.
Their biggest problem is, being forced to pre-fund pensions way into the out-years...someone here will know how and why that happened...I believe Congress had something to do with it, as usual (all the bad laws that are enacted)...
I would be happy with a "do-nothing" Congress, except it's too late for that...we need an "undo that" Congress now!
I personally really appreciate the USPS, and my gripe is with how they are forced to scratch for money, AND how this rate increase will impact lower income people much more than the wealthy, i.e., anyone who ships gifts to out-of-state family, or shops on eBay.
So, why aren't the Dem's out there screaming about how this will hurt their beloved "middle class"? Hmmm?
They are losing money yet they spend money on television advertising and beautiful artwork for stamps. Typical bureaucrat logic.
Their biggest problem is, being forced to pre-fund pensions way into the out-years...someone here will know how and why that happened...I believe Congress had something to do with it, as usual (all the bad laws that are enacted)...
I would be happy with a "do-nothing" Congress, except it's too late for that...we need an "undo that" Congress now!
I personally really appreciate the USPS, and my gripe is with how they are forced to scratch for money, AND how this rate increase will impact lower income people much more than the wealthy, i.e., anyone who ships gifts to out-of-state family, or shops on eBay, etc.
So, why aren't the Dem's all out there screaming about how this will hurt their so-called beloved "middle class"? Hmmm?
I'm guessing it must be Bush's fault...HA!
apologies for the double post - happy Friday! ;)
They have, dude.
Some 35,000 employees took early retirement this year. They have been replaced by part-time employees with lower wages ($10-$15/hr) and no benefits for the first year -- followed by the opportunity to get health insurance with a 25% contribution.
No retirement, 401K or other, at all.
All small-town Post Offices will see their hours cut to between 2 to 6 hours a day. The Postmasters, should they wish to stay, will have their wages cut to $18/hr.
Satisfied? Did you even know any of this?
Yeah, and you made $1/hour. You left out that part.
U.S. Post Office cuts threaten source of black jobs
African-Americans represent 13.1 percent of the U.S. population and 11.6 percent of the labor force, according to a 2012 U.S. Department of Labor report. Nearly one in five African-American workers hold government jobs such as mail clerks, firefighters and teachers, the report said.
"There's a long tradition of the public sector being more friendly, or less hostile, to African-American workers," said Robert Zieger, emeritus professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "The Post Office is the best example."
African-Americans make up about 20 percent of U.S. Postal Service workers - and are the majority in some urban centers, representing 75 percent to 80 percent of the 5,000 letter carriers in the Chicago area, according to Mack Julion, president of the Chicago branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers.
http://news.yahoo.com/u-post-office-cuts-threaten-source-black-jobs-180930966--business.html
Just saying
Why would he lie? I’m going by there tomorrow and I will ask him.
Relatively speaking it’s still a great deal. In 1847 when the US Post Office issued the first postage stamps, it cost 10 cents to mail a letter over 300 miles and 5 cents for less than 300 miles.
In today’s dollars that would be equivalent to paying $2.78 cents for a letter over 300 miles and $1.39 for less than 300 miles.
I NEVER forget that. Did you bother to read my tagline?
Of course, governments create inflation. I can't imagine why you'd feel it necessary to tell me that. I am FreeRepublic's premier inflation-fighter. The fact remains, though, that the Post Office [which, let's remember, doesn't get a dime of tax money] still has to raise prices to match the inflation the government has created.
Just saying what?
When you have been involved in shipping for over 26 years and sending over 15 million mail pieces per month maybe then you have the right to call what I posted “nonsense”.
Until then I stand by everything I posted.
JUNK MAIL!
I believe the law requires them to deliver it at below-market prices.
So they make it up elsewhere.
Everyone should boycott the USPS until it’s rates change so that junk mail is no longer subsidized by the other mailings.
Thirty-seven posts already and USPS Union Steward muawiyah hasn’t jumped in with his own eighty-seven in defense/apology/protest/rebuke! lol....
Read the law on the matter some time.
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