First-Class Post Office Inefficiency
There is simply no economic reason to continue this monopoly over the mail.
Forbes.com
Reminds me of an old one.....
Q: How many people work at the Post Office?
A: About half.
CARPE DIEM
Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Forbes.com
Reminds me of an old one.....
Q: How many people work at the Post Office?
A: About half.
About Me
- Name: Mark J. Perry
- Location: Washington, D.C., United States
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
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17 Comments:
I am insulted by your joke.
Read the comments below the article. 90% disagreed with the article. and this was in Forbes!
I'm not sure what a 1st class letter SHOULD cost but I somehow think that getting a letter across the country in days for 42 cents is pretty good. I can't recall one letter in my life that was lost.
I tend to agree that the USPS is an easy target but I would hope we can replicate its efficiency in all government agencies. this is an instance where one should be careful what one asks for.
I'm insulted that you're insulted.
Simply allow other companies to deliver mail. Let us allow them to offer their services.
There is absolutely no harm to it. No one is saying abolish the USPS, just allow UPS, FedEx, and anyone else who wants to try to deliver the mail
Competition will breed the best results, and if the USPS is really the most efficient vehicle for delivering mail, then it will survive.
But I know that if we allowed competitors into the mail delivery business, we would all be better off, as efficiency would go up, and we might even see some prices go down too.
At least the Post Office hasn't been losing money like AIG, Citigroup, Lehman Bros. and any other nefarious Wall Street bastard. Where's the collective cry for personal responsibility? Why not let the greedy idiots be weeded out? Why do they get to be the biggest "welfare mamas" out there?
Anonymous 9:11
Well said.
I'm amazed that the same government that prosecutes and forces the break-up of companies for being supposed monopolies [and the people who support this practice] - turn around and defend, encourage and prop up government sponsored monopolies like the USPS.
So which is it?
Are monopolies good or bad?
I guess only enlightened government bureaucrats are able to run a monopoly.
One can't be against corporate monopolies and for public monopolies.
"At least the Post Office hasn't been losing money like AIG, Citigroup, Lehman Bros. and any other nefarious Wall Street bastard. Where's the collective cry for personal responsibility? Why not let the greedy idiots be weeded out? Why do they get to be the biggest "welfare mamas" out there?"
Well that's damning by faint praise -- hey, at least they're not AIG.
Nope, but they sure aren't Fedex or UPS either.
And, for the record, I am all in favor of letting bad companies go bankrupt.
"Read the comments below the article. 90% disagreed with the article. and this was in Forbes!"
Yeah, and also based on the comments it seems that a fair number work for the USPS as well. Makes me wonder if the American Postal Workers Union sent this around.
More on the post office here:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=614
"I am insulted by your joke"...
Hey Clavin, do you find this joke insulting?
Q How do you know the Post Office is hiring?
A The flag is at half staff...:-)
You know folks, for all our collective whining about the Post Office (not without some justification) the Post Office people aren't nearly as inferior as those slugs working for the IRS or hold Congressional office...
Tax law glitch benefits illegal aliensPublished: Friday, April 17, 2009
The IRS allowed foreign workers -- many of them in the U.S. illegally -- to improperly claim nearly $7 billion in child tax credits from 2004 to 2007, a government investigator said Thursday.
Most of the credits went to workers who didn't make enough money to pay federal income taxes, Russell George, a Treasury Inspector General, said. In those cases, the workers received payments from the Internal Revenue Service after filing income tax returns. (there's a bit more)
Q. How many articles at "Forbes" make sense?
A. Not this one.
"Q. How many articles at "Forbes" make sense?
A. Not this one"...
They all do if English is the language you are familiar with...
> I'm not sure what a 1st class letter SHOULD cost but I somehow think that getting a letter across the country in days for 42 cents is pretty good.
If you're not sure what a f***ing letter should cost then you don't have a clue whether they're doing a good job or a bad job, do you?
I'm not sure what a f***ing letter would cost, either, but I bet it'd be cheaper than 42 cents if both Fed Ex and UPS were competing for doing the delivery... even if they pooled on some areas and agreed to pay only one individual contractually to handle deliveries for both companies.
The difference between us is that I'm not willing to "assume" the answer. I'd like to know.
> At least the Post Office hasn't been losing money like AIG, Citigroup, Lehman Bros. and any other nefarious Wall Street bastard.
And how would you f***ing know?
It's not like they have to use GAAP like any real business.
Chances are, just like the GSEs, they've been losing money for decades and just been a lot better at covering it up.
LOL -- word verif: crymeni.
> aren't nearly as inferior as those slugs working for the IRS
Ummm, do we WANT the IRS to be more efficient?
Remember, government agencies don't lay off people when they don't have work for them -- they make more work.So, I ask you again: do we WANT the IRS to be more efficient?
Hmmmmmm?
.
Hey OBH, I do want the IRS to be more efficient...
I can easily see the IRS spending many tens of thousands of dollars to pursue the people who may owe a few thousand in back taxes and that's just as bad as giving illegal aliens tax credits in the billions of dollars that you and I and everyone else with a job has to pay for...
I wanted to mail something today during my lunch break and I alloted 20 minutes to the task. As you can guess, it didn't happen
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