7 ms·

I'm not sure the Post Office's problems are related to technology. Their union negotiated a "no layoff" provision in their contract just this year. Why would yo

I'm not sure the Post Office's problems are related to technology. Their union negotiated a "no layoff" provision in their contract just this year. Why would you agree to that as an employer? Then there is the problem of defined benefit pensions where you end up keeping people basically on staff long after they stop working for you. The Post Office needs to go bankrupt and clear these contracts out and move forward without a union ideally. They might need to wait for Obama to leave office before doing that. As for jobs there's always work to be done. There's an infinite amount of work in fact. In a free market involuntary unemployment should be zero because someone would always be willing to pay something for a given amount of work. I have work I need done now that I just do not have time for. I also know finding someone to do that job for what I'm willing to pay is very hard since people seem to get by without working via means I do not fully understand. I'm at home today caring for my family who are basically all sick and I'm seeing a lot of men just wandering around doing nothing. I'm going to guess that the incentive to work is absent in their life for one reason or another. Not sure libertarian means that you want people left out of the system and starving though. I am a libertarian and I've spent 90% of my time post college life running or helping to run a food pantry in my spare time. Seems silly to suggest that libertarians don't care about such things.

entangld 15y ago
>>I have work I need done now that I just do not have time for. I also know finding someone to do that job for what I'm willing to pay is very hard since people seem to get by without working via means I do not fully understand.<< People don't just need any job they can get. They need a job that will pay bills for a reasonable amount of time in the future. They need to save money to live on during the next job search. Temporary low paid jobs just leave the employee stressed out and barely above water before they need to search again. I don't think many people enjoy looking for work.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  This high granularity of employment sounds like a terrible inefficiency. There are jobs that need to be done, but can't be, because they don't justify a full-time or part-time employee. There are people that need to work, but can't because much of the work that needs to be done is in chunks too small to occupy their time. Perhaps we need something like an exchange for labor, like a stock exchange meets a temp agency. We could then transition chronically unemployed but capable workers into these labor exchanges.
  - rflrob 15y ago
    > Perhaps we need something like an exchange for labor, like a stock exchange meets a temp agency. I think the problem here is that workers are even less fungible than corporate stocks. The process of separating out the chronically unemployed but capable from the chronically unemployed because of fundamental flaws is quite a job in and of itself.
  - Iv 15y ago
    Hello, I'm a freelancer. I'll do the job you want for 150% of my former salary, yet at a lower price that my boss sold it to you ! I wonder why everyone is not doing that... I cut the middle men, so that means I get to go to dinner with clients, I get to negotiate prices, I got to be friend with the CEO of the startup that employs me. I always suspected that the salary of a commercial was a high price for a very comfortable job, and I can confirm it !
    - vladd 15y ago
      According to economics, companies exist when workers are able, together, to output more than the sum of their parts. More enough to compensate for the boss overhead, and then some. In fact, it's recommended to go indie if you're medium to strongly competent in a wide range of skills such as marketing, sales, programming and operations... But for most specialized workers, the company provides the collective which makes sure they can package their work together with others and sell it to the client as a final integrated product.
      - Iv 15y ago
        I agree that this is the ideal situation but I think the system has been perverted. A single developer alone will probably bring less money than if he was working in a company, but the money he earns personally increases. I personally blame a whole generation of people coming out of management school thinking they deserved a higher salary than anyone else when in fact they were doing a job that was equally important (no more, no less) than any worker in the company.
    - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
- sp332 15y ago
  Right, because looking for a job takes a lot of time. So the opportunity cost of taking a crappy job might prevent you from ever finding a good job.
felipemnoa 15y ago
If getting a job at wages you are willing to pay means that the person will still not be able to meet any of its monetary obligations it pretty much means that the person is , for all practical purposes, still unemployed. Why work for slave wages if the outcome is the same. Better stay home and not be taken advantage off. How do this people live with no income? Most likely family or government assistance.
- Supermighty 15y ago
  Chicken and egg. If the workers can't pay rent the market will correct rent down. It's that it takes too long to correct and someone's bound to be evicted before that happens.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - jbooth 15y ago
    If the landlord can't afford mortgage, how they gonna lower the rent? Run that scenario forward a couple steps and you see the real looming problem.
    - ams6110 15y ago
      Landlord is foreclosed, bank sells at a loss, new owner rents at a lower amount. Nobody said it would be pretty.
      - jbooth 15y ago
        Ok, so we had a problem the size of a few paychecks, now it's the size of a piece of property. Hey, whatever, right? But I said a couple steps, keep going, multiply that by a few hundred thousand or a couple million around the country. Can you think of any other problems that might result?
    - analyst74 15y ago
      keeping over-priced goods at inflated price using whatever means will never work out in the long term. that applies to real-estate too, which (the real-estate industry) seems to have become the driving economic sector in many countries, which I find funny. edit: and a note on why it's funny, the value of a property never changes, only the price. From an individual perspective, you can make money trading real-estate just like trading stocks; from government's perspective, higher GDP is always good; from bank's perspective, as long as property value increases, they will make money from both interest and foreclosures; but from a society perspective, nothing of value was ever created in the process.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jbooth 15y ago
Every union "no layoff" provision I've ever seen was a case of the union choosing to forego contracted CoL raises and some various health benefits in exchange for keeping jobs. Typically it will be cost-neutral compared to layoffs and keeping benefits. The employer wouldn't sign up to it if it was a pure money loser. They're not crazy :) Also, Obama already suspended Saturday delivery. So not too sure what he has to do with a perceived unwillingness to shut down the post office. (He also cut taxes, stepped up immigration enforcement and didn't close gitmo).
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  Obama already suspended Saturday delivery. There was apparently a rogue delivery person four days ago, joyriding in the mail truck and asking me to sign for a delivery.
  - jbooth 15y ago
    Sorry, my fault. They're going to end it soon, according to Obama's postmaster general and the legislation to do so is being filed by a democratic senator. http://www.businessinsider.com/say-goodbye-to-saturday-mail-delivery-postmaster-says-2011-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/say-goodbye-to-saturday-mail-... Point still stands that "fox news said this about obama" does not correlate at all to what he's thinking or even doing. In fact you can usually assume the opposite.
    - bradly 15y ago
      > They're going to end it soon. That isn't exactly true. The Postmaster General has been trying to get Saturday delivery canceled for a while now, but congress has not been willing to let it happen.
      - jbooth 15y ago
        So, the original contention was that Socialistobama would never, ever, ever consider reduction of service. The truth is that his appointee is actively pursuing it. Regardless of whether Congress (ironically, mostly rural district republicans in congress) are impeding him as usual.
jpdoctor 15y ago
> I'm not sure the Post Office's problems are related to technology. Well, other than that whole "email" fad.
fauigerzigerk 15y ago
So how much are you willing and able to pay for someone to take care of your sick relatives? I don't know about you, but often times there is a huge gap between need and demand caused by affordability. Maybe that's why those men are wandering around doing nothing, getting paid by people who have no need for them, instead of working for those who have a need but no funds to pay them.
learc83 15y ago
Many of the problems with the post office are caused by congress. The set rules that handicap them and expect the post office to run profitably. For instance, if congress hadn't mandated overzealous pre-funding requirements the post office would be solvent.
adestefan 15y ago
What the Post Office needs is an end to the legislation that has caused this mess. The Post Office is the only entity in the entire country that is mandated by public law to pay 100% towards the future cost of a potential retirees benefits. Not of current retires, not of the guy that will retire in a year, but of every single person that maybe someday, even if it's 30 years away, cold retire from the Post Office. This is the payment that they would default on.
- ww520 15y ago
  Congress is building up the piggybank to be raided. Where would the USPS' retirement fund being parked? In the US Treasury of course.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  The only government entity. Every private sector entity needs to fully fund their pension obligations. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR00004:@@@L&summ2=m&#38 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR00004:@@@L&#3...;
lists 15y ago
>Not sure libertarian means that you want people left out of the system and starving though. I am a libertarian and I've spent 90% of my time post college life running or helping to run a food pantry in my spare time. Seems silly to suggest that libertarians don't care about such things. I think you're missing the point. It means you endorse a system where food pantrys are necessary because there's no way everyone 'makes it'. You're just on the right side of the food line.
ww520 15y ago
If it's libertarian in control, Congress won't be there to fix the postal stamp price. The Post Office is between a rock and a hard place. Congress prevents it from raising price and Congress wants it to massively fund future expenditure. The huge loss is artificial. For the services it provides, USPS is damn efficient.

entangld 15y ago

>>I have work I need done now that I just do not have time for. I also know finding someone to do that job for what I'm willing to pay is very hard since people seem to get by without working via means I do not fully understand.<< People don't just need any job they can get. They need a job that will pay bills for a reasonable amount of time in the future. They need to save money to live on during the next job search. Temporary low paid jobs just leave the employee stressed out and barely above water before they need to search again. I don't think many people enjoy looking for work.

nitrogen 15y ago
This high granularity of employment sounds like a terrible inefficiency. There are jobs that need to be done, but can't be, because they don't justify a full-time or part-time employee. There are people that need to work, but can't because much of the work that needs to be done is in chunks too small to occupy their time. Perhaps we need something like an exchange for labor, like a stock exchange meets a temp agency. We could then transition chronically unemployed but capable workers into these labor exchanges.
- rflrob 15y ago
  > Perhaps we need something like an exchange for labor, like a stock exchange meets a temp agency. I think the problem here is that workers are even less fungible than corporate stocks. The process of separating out the chronically unemployed but capable from the chronically unemployed because of fundamental flaws is quite a job in and of itself.
- Iv 15y ago
  Hello, I'm a freelancer. I'll do the job you want for 150% of my former salary, yet at a lower price that my boss sold it to you ! I wonder why everyone is not doing that... I cut the middle men, so that means I get to go to dinner with clients, I get to negotiate prices, I got to be friend with the CEO of the startup that employs me. I always suspected that the salary of a commercial was a high price for a very comfortable job, and I can confirm it !
  - vladd 15y ago
    According to economics, companies exist when workers are able, together, to output more than the sum of their parts. More enough to compensate for the boss overhead, and then some. In fact, it's recommended to go indie if you're medium to strongly competent in a wide range of skills such as marketing, sales, programming and operations... But for most specialized workers, the company provides the collective which makes sure they can package their work together with others and sell it to the client as a final integrated product.
    - Iv 15y ago
      I agree that this is the ideal situation but I think the system has been perverted. A single developer alone will probably bring less money than if he was working in a company, but the money he earns personally increases. I personally blame a whole generation of people coming out of management school thinking they deserved a higher salary than anyone else when in fact they were doing a job that was equally important (no more, no less) than any worker in the company.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
sp332 15y ago
Right, because looking for a job takes a lot of time. So the opportunity cost of taking a crappy job might prevent you from ever finding a good job.

felipemnoa 15y ago

If getting a job at wages you are willing to pay means that the person will still not be able to meet any of its monetary obligations it pretty much means that the person is , for all practical purposes, still unemployed. Why work for slave wages if the outcome is the same. Better stay home and not be taken advantage off. How do this people live with no income? Most likely family or government assistance.

Supermighty 15y ago
Chicken and egg. If the workers can't pay rent the market will correct rent down. It's that it takes too long to correct and someone's bound to be evicted before that happens.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jbooth 15y ago
  If the landlord can't afford mortgage, how they gonna lower the rent? Run that scenario forward a couple steps and you see the real looming problem.
  - ams6110 15y ago
    Landlord is foreclosed, bank sells at a loss, new owner rents at a lower amount. Nobody said it would be pretty.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      Ok, so we had a problem the size of a few paychecks, now it's the size of a piece of property. Hey, whatever, right? But I said a couple steps, keep going, multiply that by a few hundred thousand or a couple million around the country. Can you think of any other problems that might result?
  - analyst74 15y ago
    keeping over-priced goods at inflated price using whatever means will never work out in the long term. that applies to real-estate too, which (the real-estate industry) seems to have become the driving economic sector in many countries, which I find funny. edit: and a note on why it's funny, the value of a property never changes, only the price. From an individual perspective, you can make money trading real-estate just like trading stocks; from government's perspective, higher GDP is always good; from bank's perspective, as long as property value increases, they will make money from both interest and foreclosures; but from a society perspective, nothing of value was ever created in the process.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jbooth 15y ago

Every union "no layoff" provision I've ever seen was a case of the union choosing to forego contracted CoL raises and some various health benefits in exchange for keeping jobs. Typically it will be cost-neutral compared to layoffs and keeping benefits. The employer wouldn't sign up to it if it was a pure money loser. They're not crazy :) Also, Obama already suspended Saturday delivery. So not too sure what he has to do with a perceived unwillingness to shut down the post office. (He also cut taxes, stepped up immigration enforcement and didn't close gitmo).

CWuestefeld 15y ago
Obama already suspended Saturday delivery. There was apparently a rogue delivery person four days ago, joyriding in the mail truck and asking me to sign for a delivery.
- jbooth 15y ago
  Sorry, my fault. They're going to end it soon, according to Obama's postmaster general and the legislation to do so is being filed by a democratic senator. http://www.businessinsider.com/say-goodbye-to-saturday-mail-delivery-postmaster-says-2011-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/say-goodbye-to-saturday-mail-... Point still stands that "fox news said this about obama" does not correlate at all to what he's thinking or even doing. In fact you can usually assume the opposite.
  - bradly 15y ago
    > They're going to end it soon. That isn't exactly true. The Postmaster General has been trying to get Saturday delivery canceled for a while now, but congress has not been willing to let it happen.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      So, the original contention was that Socialistobama would never, ever, ever consider reduction of service. The truth is that his appointee is actively pursuing it. Regardless of whether Congress (ironically, mostly rural district republicans in congress) are impeding him as usual.

jpdoctor 15y ago

> I'm not sure the Post Office's problems are related to technology. Well, other than that whole "email" fad.

fauigerzigerk 15y ago

So how much are you willing and able to pay for someone to take care of your sick relatives? I don't know about you, but often times there is a huge gap between need and demand caused by affordability. Maybe that's why those men are wandering around doing nothing, getting paid by people who have no need for them, instead of working for those who have a need but no funds to pay them.

learc83 15y ago

Many of the problems with the post office are caused by congress. The set rules that handicap them and expect the post office to run profitably. For instance, if congress hadn't mandated overzealous pre-funding requirements the post office would be solvent.

adestefan 15y ago

What the Post Office needs is an end to the legislation that has caused this mess. The Post Office is the only entity in the entire country that is mandated by public law to pay 100% towards the future cost of a potential retirees benefits. Not of current retires, not of the guy that will retire in a year, but of every single person that maybe someday, even if it's 30 years away, cold retire from the Post Office. This is the payment that they would default on.

ww520 15y ago
Congress is building up the piggybank to be raided. Where would the USPS' retirement fund being parked? In the US Treasury of course.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
The only government entity. Every private sector entity needs to fully fund their pension obligations. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR00004:@@@L&summ2=m&#38 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR00004:@@@L&#3...;

lists 15y ago

>Not sure libertarian means that you want people left out of the system and starving though. I am a libertarian and I've spent 90% of my time post college life running or helping to run a food pantry in my spare time. Seems silly to suggest that libertarians don't care about such things. I think you're missing the point. It means you endorse a system where food pantrys are necessary because there's no way everyone 'makes it'. You're just on the right side of the food line.

ww520 15y ago

If it's libertarian in control, Congress won't be there to fix the postal stamp price. The Post Office is between a rock and a hard place. Congress prevents it from raising price and Congress wants it to massively fund future expenditure. The huge loss is artificial. For the services it provides, USPS is damn efficient.