• CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    4 minutes ago

    DeJoy is still there, yes? Isn’t it weird how an unelected asshat like fElon can fire employees of the government who were basically nonpartisan, not to mention dismantle agencies, as part of a fake “agency”.

    But somehow, in 4 years of the Biden administration a partisan hack like DeJoy kept his job…

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    22 minutes ago

    I guess a broken clock can be right twice a day, this one was actually a good idea.

    Congress should re implement this one for a little while.

      • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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        9 hours ago

        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.

      • teamevil@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        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

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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        12 hours ago

        Chinese packages are a net negative for the post office, you can probably find articles about that from Trump’s first term.

          • bjorney
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            10 hours ago

            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

          • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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            11 hours ago

            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.

              • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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                10 hours ago

                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.

                • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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                  9 hours ago

                  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

            • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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              11 hours ago

              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.

        • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          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.

        • BertramDitore@lemm.ee
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          11 hours ago

          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.

          • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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            10 hours ago

            It doesn’t have to profit, but it also doesn’t have to subsidize incoming packages from China.

              • bjorney
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                9 hours ago

                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

        • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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          10 hours ago

          Everything they do is a “net negative”! My company’s IT and HR departments don’t generate any revenue at all…

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      How did Bezos let this happen? Didn’t he buy his way into the administration for reasons?

  • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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    11 hours ago

    The Congress shall have Power…To establish Post Offices and post Roads

    The Post Office has the constitutional authority to designate mail routes. The Post Office is also empowered to construct or designate post offices with the implied authority to carry, deliver, and regulate the mail of the United States as a whole. The Postal Power also includes the power to designate certain materials as non-mailable, and to pass statutes criminalizing abuses of the postal system (such as mail fraud and armed robbery of post offices).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    Some brilliant entrepreneurs have surely already started repackaging businesses in Canada and Mexico.

    • Mereo
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      14 hours ago

      No so, from the article:

      Daniel, the owner of a trucking company based in Alberta, Canada, who asked to only use his first name for privacy reasons, tells WIRED that two of his company’s trucks were turned away at the US border in New York and Montana today because they contained packages originally from China. After speaking with a US Customs and Border Protection agent in Montana, the company was able to get a third truck into Washington state by removing all packages from China, Daniel says.

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        Yeeees, and the idea is to repackage the items so that the packages are not originally from China. Now it’s a Canadian export!

    • Great Blue Heron
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      12 hours ago

      The way I read it, the entrepreneur is Bezos - he has his own planes etc. and does not need USPS. You have to buy Chinese stuff from him now. (I have not researched the subject in depth - this is just my take on the headline)

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Bezos would still be subject tot he same import tariffs, the same Customs issues.

        The way I read it is they just created a huge new workload for Customs without funding the resources to do it. Unless we make huge changes to how sites like Amazon works, now Customs needs to have an input in every one of the millions of packages directly sent from over seas every day.

        USPS is smart to say there’s no way to make it work all of the sudden, but it ought to affect everyone.

        …… I see a more recent post that some form of sanity prevailed. If we’re going to instigate trade wars out of spite, let’s at least have a transition where we can try to figure out how to make it work

    • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee
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      14 hours ago

      might be safer to do it from Cuba at least there you know what bullshit you’ll be dealing with next month.

  • Dragomus@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Want your package from chaina? Pay the tariffs!

    ~…then very humbly ask the Chinese government to refund you those tariff costs…~

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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      7 minutes ago

      I still don’t completely understand how online purchases for such end up working out. Say I buy a dog kennel. The dog kennel was purchased by an importer who pays the tariffs directly to the Treasury, and they mark the price of the product up when they sell it to me so they cover their lost profit. Maybe I misunderstood you last sentence, but no one should be having to ask China to pay anything as they didn’t have to pay anything more or less. They could reduce their price to help incentivise the purchases made by the importer to avoid lost sales, but they should only lose sales if the kennel was less than 25% difference in price to start with. Which a lot of importers seem to be saying that the price is usually 300%.

      Idk, time will tell