Opportunity Cost or Just Cheap?

I walked inside the local UPS store with a 2-pound package. I wanted to ship it via USPS, thinking that it would be cheaper than the UPS rates. But their USPS rate for this package was $25 which was just a few dollars short of the content. The UPS fee was cheaper, $18 for ground shipping.

The clerk said, if I go to the actual post office, their fees would be much lower. A bit irritated and hungry, my husband agreed to drive to the post office but waited in the truck. I went inside, there was a huge line of 12 people and only one clerk, the rest were sorting mail while giving people occasional murderous looks from their tedious task on a Saturday morning.

I decided to use the electronic scale in the lobby as there was no line at all. The package was weighed, accepted, and it was time to pay $13.90. I inserted the card, forgetting that it was my husband’s card, and waited for the payment screen. The electronic gods wanted a pin, and carelessly, I used mine. It was, of course declined, as the pin was not correct. The machine asked me to try again, and I did, with the same result. Irritated to say the least, I walked back to my husband who was sitting cozily in the air-conditioned cab and asked him to come and do the pin. He touched the wrong key and again, failure. By this time, the bankcard had been locked but we had no idea.

We drove back to the UPS store, having eaten sufficient crow to gag both of us, we mailed the package for $18, an outrageous amount compared to what we were shipping.

Happy to be rid of the said package, we went to Pot Belly’s for a sandwich, but the bankcard was now locked and was declined. Bless the banksters who want to protect our cards! Now, we had the unpleasant duty to call them and explain that it was we who forgot the pin, not some card thief from the post office. We paid with cash, ate, and started laughing at the same time.

We are not sure which was more irritating, the fact that we wasted 45 minutes of our collective time, gasoline, wear, and tear on the truck, and whatever calls we must make to the bank, all of which had a steep opportunity cost, much larger than the extra postage, or the fact that we were so cheap and refused in the beginning to pay the extra $4.10 to mail the package via UPS. Lesson learned, do not mess with the UPS or the USPS, they are both quite expensive and slow.

Economics set aside, we decided on the positive side that it was all worth it because we spent “quality” time together, with the silly realization that we are old and forget pins, and that it is harder than we thought to remember so many different ones.                                       

 

The U.S. Post Offices are Golden Real Estate

I mailed a package of clothes overseas today. It cost $120. The same package cost $30-$40 to ship not long ago. So much for this administration’s highly advertised “non-existent” inflation. The service has not improved, nor did the sour demeanor and the speed of the government employees, but the cost went up at least three times. The pay is good and the benefits are stellar, but then, who wants to sort mail all day and deal with the stressed public?

We’ve heard every year that the U.S. Post Office is insolvent and must raise the price of stamps, a nice way of saying, they are broke and have been broke for a long time. Taxpayer bailouts and subsidies have been their business model. Rep. Darrell Issa said, without “the freedom to realign its infrastructure and operations in line with the changing way Americans use mail, the agency will remain insolvent.” (Jennifer G. Hickey, Newsmax, October 22, 2013)

Few noticed, in the flurry of crises created by this administration, that the U.S. Post Office defaulted a third time this year on a binding $5.6 billion payment for the future healthcare of retirees. Who funds the future healthcare of retirees not the current healthcare?

The price of stamps will go up again in 2014 to cover the 2013 loss of $6 billion. A government bailout of $50 billion would be needed in 2017. How do they know exactly how much would be needed by 2017?

The USPS discarded recently millions of already printed stamps in the “Just Move” series because three of the 15 sports activities shown were found objectionable (children performing a cannonball dive, skateboarding without kneepads, and doing a headstand without a helmet) by liberal sports figures who feared that they may hurt our sissified and fragile children. https://postalnews.com/postalnewsblog/2013/10/07/usps-to-destroy-just-move-stamps-over-safety-concerns/

How did previous generations survive without all these helmets, seat belts, knee pads, elbow pads, butt pads while riding in cars, riding bikes, playing dodge ball, tag, football, basketball, and other activities deemed “dangerous” by the liberal left who like to control everything?

Many Americans are paying bills online and traditional mail has dropped by 30 percent. I wished the level of junk and unsolicited mail would drop to zero. If the post office cannot adjust its business model, detractors say, closing locales that are losing money and forging cheaper public-private partnerships are the only options.

If a simple agency of the U.S. government cannot operate successfully delivering letters and packages, should the government be running our healthcare system when it is already experiencing major enrollment and operational “glitches” that are everybody’s fault except the fault of those who wrote, pushed, and passed Obama Care? What would the delivery of actual health care be like?

On the other hand, according to Yves Smith, the USPS’ financial status is a fabrication. What gives it the appearance of insolvency is a 2006 Congressional measure that forces the USPS to “prepay retiree benefits 75 years in advance. It has to fund benefits now for workers who haven’t even been hired.” He believes that a “looting opportunity” is in place to turn the post office into a public-private partnership. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/19042-senator-diane-feinsteins-husband-selling-post-offices-to-cronies-on-the-cheap

Peter Byrne, in his yearlong investigation has uncovered dealings involving closures and sales of post offices around the country.  He describes one such closure in downtown Berkley. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/going-postal/Content?oid=3713528&showFullText=true

Peter Byrne’s e-book, “Going Postal: U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein's husband sells post offices to his friends, cheap,” is on the best seller list at Amazon under journalism. One interesting chapter is titled, “Turning public assets into private gold.” The research for his 2013 book was funded by the William James Association in Santa Cruz, California.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F3JTO9G?tag=vglnkc8012-20

Byrne describes the July 27, 2013 demonstration outside the historic post office in downtown Berkley. A city council member angrily protested the sale along with 200 other people. It was not just about the inconvenience of not being able to buy stamps, mail packages, send registered letters, or buy a money order, it was the fact that the Berkley City Council had unanimously voted against the sale. Would the American taxpayers gain from the postal service’s $85 billion real estate portfolio?