
USPS Announces Temporary Price Increase - juokaz
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-postal-service-announces-temporary-price-increase-301112585.html
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floatingatoll
This price increase affects only 'commercial competitive packages', as per
midway down the page. Think of this as a "Black Friday" palliative measure.

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nick_kline
Hmm, what does this really mean? Separate from the apparent active destruction
or reduction of usps capacity by removing machines from sorting and ceasing
overtime leading to slowdowns in delivery, this could be fine? Why not
increase all prices at the same time? [1] is the fiscal 2019 revenue report.
First class prices affect consumers and then there's the problem of people
needing to get new stamps etc. It's more hidden to raise non-first class
costs.

[1] says in 2019, of $71 billion, 24 billion from first class, 16 billion from
marketing mail, 23 billion from shipping & packages, 2.5 billion intl, 1
billion periodicals, 4 billion other. So 16+23 = 39 billion for marketing and
packages, just over half.

What I'd like to see is that this short term price increase will allow the
usps to add needed capacity to meet the crucial time of the election. Oct 18,
2020 is when that starts, that could be too late of bring on new capacity, and
that new capacity needs to be earlier than the Nov 3 election date for
shipping ballots. So this is encouraging, but is it early enough, does it have
enough impact to address the current situation.

1\. [https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-
releases/2019/1114-...](https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-
releases/2019/1114-usps-reports-fiscal-year-2019-results.htm)

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Daishiman
What it means is that they're trying to steal an election.

I have no idea why you're trying to make any logical sense out of this.

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mrosett
With all due respect, did you read the announcement? This is only for
packages. Ballots are unaffected.

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nick_kline
I'm trying to think about this in the larger context. By getting more money
for a segment of the mail, they could be helping overall. But it's really late
in terms of the election. There's no discussion about any adjustments on our
current problems. The new usps leadership is saying there's a problem of not
enough revenue to provide service. So is this a red herring change, or is it a
reasonable adjustment to that? I'd say without connecting this to increases in
service to meet the supposed current problem, this is a not an honest attempt
to deal with it.

If I was running the usps and I had intentions of providing proper service to
the us, I'd address this directly "outr costs are too high, that's why we are
talking about not meeting our needs, but we are going to get more revenue by
doing this, and now we believe we can meet needs". But all those pieces are
not there.

Of course we can sacrifice some short term over-budget spending by the USPS
for the crucial honest results for our once in 4 years election.

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mrosett
This applies to commercial packages, not retail packages and definitely not
ballots. So if you’re here for a “steal the election!” you’re in the wrong
place.

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shostack
Could this instead be about trying to boost the value of his Amazon stock
somehow?

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21367736/postmaster-
gener...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21367736/postmaster-general-
amazon-post-office-conflict)

