Justin Ross, over at The Perfect Substitute, explains beautifully why the United States Post Office is not a model of efficiency — not even close. (HT John Stossel)
And in this letter, published more than 15 years ago in the New York Times, George Selgin and I make a closely related point about the post office.
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Well, even the president knows that. Why, he just told us in the town hall meeting that the post office sucks and he plans to launch another post-office like loser in the health care sector to join all the other wealth destructive activities government engages in. Let’s consider the record:
Amtrak – bankrupt
medicare – bankrupt
medicaid – bankrupt
post office – bankrupt
social security – bankrupt
Fannie Mae – bankrupt
Freddie Mac – bankrupt
No wonder government was so eager to take over GM – it’s bankrupt. Right up the government’s alley.
Come to think of it, if government keeps taking over private industry, they can finally bankrupt the entire country.
Profit is evil to a liberal, so pointing out how those programs are bankrupt is of no relevance to them. They believe in collectivism.
Collective starvation is a glorious shared experience comrade Arrowsmith.
Oh! What a lofty goal!
You forgot the VA.
…I also didn’t mention government’s stellar handling of primary education, where even the English teachers don’t know the difference between “loose” and “lose”.
I love this post.
http://www.federaltimes.com/federal-times-blog/2009/08/17/postal-supervisors-obama-swipe-a-kick-in-the-chest/
I especially love this part of the post: “What Obama also ignored last week was that the Postal Service isn’t on the same playing field as FedEx or UPS. The Postal Service has to contend with unions, lawmakers and the Postal Regulatory Commission and as a result, can’t raise prices or close facilities on a whim the way its private-sector counterparts can when mail volume plunges.”
Hilarious, I will remember to use this comparison when such discussion come up in conversations in the future.
Subtle, yet devastating.
Let’s take Amtrak from Baltimore to DC. To drive 60 miles each way to DC with a family of 4 requires let’s say 6 gallons of gas – $15. Let’s say parking is another $20, for a total of $32.50. Taking Amtrak is $98 plus at least $10 in parking. So $32.50 versus $108.
oh and before anyone points it out, roads are government provided, but that fee is incorporated into the gas tax.
Hey, McWop!
I played your game, but chose Denver to DC (round trip, family of four).
Amtrak: $1362
Drive: $360 @ 25mpg
I guess to be fair to Amtrak, I could add the $40 oil change, and $200 for meals.
So, Drive: $600
That is amazing! You must have a Chevy Volt if you can drive 3370 miles at 11.9 cents/mile. The IRS allows .55/mile for those guys with the average gas hog. Plus you wont need that oil change for your Volt, so you’ve actually held the cost down to 10.7 cents/mile. Amazing!
What does the IRS reimbursement have to do with anything? a 3400 mile trip at 25 mpg and $2.50 gas does not cost .55 cents per mile. 3400 divided by 25 mpg times $2.50. Then add in Jiffy lube, and driving is still cheaper.
Well, I was going to do a hypothetical of Denver to Las Vegas, but Amtrak doesn’t believe that a city of 2 million warrants service. They choose instead to serve Needles, CA – a bustling metropolis of 6 thousand.
By the way, fuel cost for my round trip to Vegas was about $200 @ 20mpg. I just got my statement.
Does armtrak drop you off at your Hotel, or your ultimate destination inside the city?
Nope.
How does the price of bulk kiwis plus cost of transporting them in bulk via cargo ships to port, on trains to warehouses, to distribution centers then grocery stores by truck, compare in any way to delivery to 350,000,000+ discrete locations. There has to be some economy of scale in the bulk distribution system.
New Zealand is not the sole source of the kiwi fruit and is not even the worlds primary producer: that would be Italy. The US is seventh in world production.
I agree that USPS needs to be reformed and exposed to market competion, but with caveats that most readers here would not agree with.
“New Zealand is not the sole source of the kiwifruit and is not even the worlds primary producer: that would be Italy. The US is seventh in world production.”
I s’pose you could say “if it weren’t for explorers who discovered New Zealand we wouldn’t have the pleasure of eating kiwifruit”? Actually the more correct name for the kiwifruit is the ‘Chinese Gooseberry’.
Wow schwabby I just sent a post and was going to include these same facts that us curious types will come across as we research the issues rather then reacting in a knee-JERK response as some of the true believers here do.
Facts certainly have a liberal bias.
Good job!
“compare in any way to delivery to 350,000,000+ ”
Delivering to 350,000,000+ locations 6d/wk is infinitely more foolish, and obviously more wasteful. Maybe you can also have each postal worker do a lifelike oil painting of every dog he encounters every day. Imagine how much more work THAT would be than delivering kiwis to grocery stores.
I’m feeling pretty special. The Post Office vs. FedEx is my oldest example in casual conversation.
I just did a cost comparison and gave the results in my link below. Post office is far cheaper.
did you include the several billion yearly subsidy in your figures? :0)
While I’m critical as any of the USPS and appreciate the overarching points, I think the analogy is at least somewhat flawed.
Kiwi is shipped in bulk, and very few destinations are serviced. The farm, the supplier, the distributor, the store, and maybe a couple of more stops. Shipping millions of individual envelopes to millions of individually sorted addresses is a far more tedious task than crates of the same product going to the same destination.
But all I get in value from the USPS is Netflix. The rest is total junk, and DVDs are going to be extinct soon, and the USPS will mean nothing to me. At least I can eat a kiwi.
I agree. Just add in my gas cost to drive to a supermarket to get a single Kiwi and the total cost is up to $0.44. (Of course if I buy more, say 10, the average cost comes down in a hurry.) Plus, if I have a Kiwi I need shipped somewhere, the amazing Kiwi distribution system does nothing for me.
If everyone drove their letter to a post office and put the letter in bin for the destination zip code, USPS could probably save bunches on delivery. Then to receive mail, “all you have to do” is sift through the big pile of mail delivered to your zip code. Plus think of all the money we’ll save through eliminating mailboxes.
While Fed Ex and UPS do seem to deliver packages better, as far as I know, they won’t deliver anything for $0.44.
A.J. “If everyone drove their letter to a post office and put the letter in bin for the destination zip code, USPS could probably save bunches on delivery.”
Good point, A.J., about the cost of final delivery to residential and business addresses. That cost is why FedEx offerred – at least when I worked for them – a discount for parcels dropped off and picked up at FedEx stations.
A.J.: “While Fed Ex and UPS do seem to deliver packages better, as far as I know, they won’t deliver anything for $0.44.”
FedEx and USPS are prohibited by law from delivering non-urgent letters. Federal law defines urgent as anything which is delivered in less than 12 hours or anything for which the sender is willing to pay at least $3.00. So $3.00 is the minimum price FedEx and UPS are allowed to charge.
FedEx and UPS are also prohibited from using residential or business mailboxes. So they cannot just drop an overnight letter into a mail slot or a mailbox.
The USPS at this point is just another public works project. If not, then open up first class mail to private carriers, and completely privatize the USPS, permitting its purchase by private interests.
What a fallacious comparison. Bulk shipping compared to door to door.
Here’s a rate comparison for shipping a 1 pound package from my home to St Louis.
You are just a real pain in the arse muirgeo, pointing out those nasty facts. Now the choir is all confused but a little more obfuscation from the preacher will get them back in harmony shortly. Good job keeping them on their toes.
I just did a real live rate comparison available to anyone online and showed them how much cheaper the USPS was then Fed Ex and UPS and they now think THEY are shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah they’re all standing in a circle shooting at a barrel alright. A barrel of cognitive dissonance… and they’re killin it dead.
What about $2.8 billion annual deficit do you not understand? I suppose if they shipped for free and had a $50 billion deficit, that would be considered even MORE successful.
You’re the same one who said Medicare works well, completely ignoring its $30 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
Don’t waste your time with muirgeo. I asked him a tough question 3-4 threads ago. He quit posting in that thread at that very moment. He is a hypocrite. I’m sure that you knew that already.
You’re right. Sometimes it’s just hard to resist shooting fish in barrels.
My Uncle once tried shooting a fish in a lake, using a .357. He missed.
I hope you have better luck.
I believe Fed Ex lost 1.5 billion last year too… that’s not a problem with the USPS or Fed Ex it’s a result of a bigger picture of chasing libertarian economic policies and having them blow up the wider economy.
No they didn’t lose 1.5 billion last year. In the May 2009 quarter they had a loss (expected considering the economy), but for the year they had a profit, and have ample cash reserves, and ample free cash flow. Whereas the GAO has categorized the USPS’s financial situation as high risk.
I think all this discussion of profits is a little besides the point.
For one thing, we don’t have a post office to run a profit. The fact that it runs a deficit says nothing about the value of the post office. If the post office was a for-profit institution it would mean something, but it’s not.
The prices are very comparable, at least in a quick experiment I did. A one pound package from DC to Baltimore, two days, using their box is $10.35 for a medium box for the post office, and $13.05 for Fed Ex. The post office doesn’t have to run a profit which explains the moderate cost advantage.
Do we NEED a public post office? Probably not anymore. I’d be fine abolishing the whole thing. Did we need one when we wrote the Constitution? You probably could have made a much better case for it back then.
The point is (1.) it’s not doing abysmally, just like with Medicare – despite it’s problems it’s not doing abysmally (and the cost projections for Medicare are a mirror image of the cost projections facing private insurers), (2.) to point out that it runs a deficit is absolutely absurd and irrelevant because it’s not a for-profit institution. The fact that it runs a deficit is therefore meaningless.
It’s like judging the public school system by pointing out that the much fewer private schools do a better job. Of course they do a better job. The fact that they are private means they have to do a better job otherwise there’s no point in existing (indeed – in the case of FedEx and UPS, not only is there no point in existing – they simply can’t exist unless they do a better job than the public alternative). That’s greaet for private mail carriers and private schools – but it completely misses the point of why we have public mail carriers and public schools. Not because we think that decision by fiat is more efficient than the market. That’s not the argument. We have them because we as a society (with some notable dissenters, I know, I know) decided that even if public schools are on average of lower quality than the relatively fewer private schools – we would rather provide some education in a guaranteed public school system, even if that system is destined to be less efficient. We would rather guarantee that an expansive new nation had dependable mail service, rather than just living with more efficient mail service that only served the eastern sea board.
I’m no expert on the history of mail service – perhaps we did have private service much earlier and much more extensively.
If we did that’s great – I LIKE private provision of goods and services. But we should be careful not to garble the arguments put forward for a public mail service by making too much of the fact that they run a deficit. Who cares if they run a deficit? What do you think that really implies?
Lets see what your analysis left out, shipping times (does USPS have same day?), and in your chart the USPS does not deliver anything before 3pm. How about insurance above $100 which is usually extra with USPS and expensive. FedEx and UPS have far more advanced tracking systems – I know my company uses these.
Yes the USPS may be cheaper in some cases, but many it is not. Let’s also not forget who commercialized overnight, and it was not USPS. In fact it was the lack of these services that gave rise to FedEx, and it took a long time for the USPS to catch up.
And that’s a good thing. But it’s NOT a reason to get rid of the Post Office which delivers a letter ANYWHERE for 44 cents. A private system wouldn’t do that. Maybe everytime a send a letter I’m paying 6 extra cents for the fact that they do that but that’s a good thing.
Just like Medicare which covers millions of people the insurance industry would refuse to cover.
I never said to get rid of the USPS, my point is that many argue the government is more efficient than the private sector, and that is just not true in many cases – the USPS versus FedEx is a good example as FedEx provides an extremely competitive service. Amtrak is another good example of a poorly run government corporation, you can add the TVA to that too. There are some things that the government is well suited for, like providing police protection and roads.
I have no problem with the government competing, so long as they do it fairly, and not place roadblocks that favor themselves.
The USPS will become a small shell of what it once was in 10 years, as email continues to bleed it to death. How many credit card solicitations does one need via snail mail?
What you seem to keep missing is that the post office does not deliver a letter for 44 cents. The cost is much higher. They just hide some of the cost and force all of us to pay that part.
You’ve been fooled into thinking it’s cheaper than it is. FedEx, UPS, etc. don’t have the option of forcing non-customers to pay part of their costs, so your comparisons above are no good.
Why are you guys wasting your precious time with that certified imbecile – he is a burden to the society.
By law, FedEx and UPS cannot deliver a letter for less than $3.00. There is an exception in that they can deliver it for less if they delivery takes less than 12 hours.
A.J. “While Fed Ex and UPS do seem to deliver packages better, as far as I know, they won’t deliver anything for $0.44.”
FedEx and UPS are prohibited by the Private Express Statutes from competing in the non-priority mail market. That is the USPS monopoly.
By law, letter delivered by FedEx and UPS must meet the “test of urgency”:
1) delivery is required and completed within 12 hours; or
2) sender must demonstrate urgency by paying the greater of $3.00 or twice the USPS Priority Mail rate.
I agree with others about the weakness of the kiwi and mail delivery comparison. There’s a lot of cost in getting the stuff to the last few feet. I also have to agree that the service the post office provides isn’t all that bad, though I bet it could be better.
I think what many people miss in the post office comparison is that more than 90% of the post office’s costs are covered by first party payments by somewhat willing users of the service. If that percentage goes down, I would expect to see the quality of service go with it.
I can’t believe the long argument in these posts how some feel that “profit” is not relevant to the USPS vs. Fedex/UPS debate. Though it is a measure used by private industry, half of this debate is private industry. It’s really just a matter of terminology, since profit is essentially a surplus, and a loss is essentially a deficit. Both are equally good measures of the bottom line, or the success of the company/program. Running a deficit (USPS) means you are costing taxpayers money, while a profiting company (UPS/Fedex) is providing additional tax revenue. Even if the private company realizes a loss, it is not going to cost taxpayer’s money (normally).
You cannot say that deficits are irrelevant when talking about a government program. Being that we taxpayers are footing the bill for those deficits, it is possibly the most important measure of any government program.
Deficits only matter if the other party is running them.
In barrels with a shotgun is less sporting, but more akin to the challenge muir gives us. This fish, however, just keeps coming back, like a Promethean liver.
I was just correcting a fact thrown out there, but the $7 billion deficit is important – especially when it subsidizes private companies sending junk mail, much of which is scandalous.
See my post below for my views on the balance of government and private services.
The point is (1.) it’s not doing abysmally, just like with Medicare – despite it’s problems it’s not doing abysmally
No, you progressives never see value destruction as “doing abysmally”. Even as a self-proclaimed “card carrying economist”, you don’t see that if the post office must be subsidized, it is “doing abysmally”.
Since they steal from me to pay the lazy, unionized half-wits at the post office, I care if they run a deficit. Since you’re just out of college, I suspect that you haven’t been productive enough yet to be thoroughly raped by the IRS yet, so the fact that you don’t care is unsurprising.
Now, that is a good response, that imbecile muirgeo could only fantasize about while watching porn on his other window. Not that I agree with it, but that is a well thought out response worth responding to.
If we were discussing the growth of rabbit population in Australia, muirgeo will blame it all on the “do nothing, laissez-faire” Hoover and the destruction of “regulation” in this country since 1981 ( yeah, that’s his favorite year ).
I agree. Most of the stuff I get is junk mail. The rest of it could come to me in electronic form. There is simply no need for the USPS.
Daniel Kuehn: “The post office doesn’t have to run a profit which explains the moderate cost advantage.”
There are reasons why FedEx charges more than USPS, but I doubt that “cost advantage” is one of them.
The most obvious reason for a higher FedEx price is product differentiation. Anyone who has shipped packages regularly knows that FedEx is more reliable, and can command a higher price.
USPS has long been able to subsidize its competitive products with revenues from its monopoly products. As long as Congress is willing to continue raising postal rates for monopoly products, USPS has no reason to price its competitive products even at a break-even price.
The big problem with USPS is that it is allowed to both enjoy a monopoly in a huge revenue market and at the same time compete with private companies in other markets.
Daniel Kuehn: “but it completely misses the point of why we have public mail carriers and public schools.”
We continue to have public mail carriers only because federal law prohibits private mail carriers from competing with USPS. The Private Express Statutes prevent FedEx and UPS and anyone else from offerring mail delivery for less than $3.00. There is one exception: private companies can charge less if they deliver the letter within 12 hours.
Why does Congress continue to allow this monopoly? It might have something to do with the $6 million that 360,000 postal workers have contributed to Congressional campaigns the past 6 years.
Ya – I saw you’re not suggesting abolishing the USPS. To be honest I wasn’t sure where to put my resposne, so I just responded to the most recent post.
Interestingly enough, as comfortable as I am with public service deficits and as comfortable as I am with public provision of goods and services, I’d probably be very amenable to privatizing the post office – maybe more than you in the end
Is it even possible to disagree with someone without assuming that they haven’t been victimized like you have or that they’re less productive than you?
How is a deficit proof that they’re “doing abysmally”. Let’s say the post office charged enough so that it broke even – no subsidy. And let’s say theoretically that they were just as efficient as FedEx in that situation.
OK, now that they’ve done that, let’s say they cut prices by 50% so that they automatically become 50% subsidized.
Have they magically become “abysmal”? Of course not. It’s a decision about how to finance a public institution (an option that obviously a private firm has no access to). It is entirely irrelevant to a discussion of whether they are “abysmal” or not. You can’t even judge it by the same standards. Is Medicaid “abysmally” run because it runs subsidies? Of course not – because subsidies are the whole point. Insofar as it is still subsidized it’s doing a fantastic job! I didn’t say I “don’t care” I said that it’s irrelevant in that sense.
“Lazy half-wits”… do you even realize how arrogant you sound?
LOL. Oh, I’m so sorry….please DO tell me what your tax rate is and what it is exactly you produce. The business I founded pays millions in tax revenue every year. Are you that productive? I hadn’t heard. Since you’re all for those progressive taxes that I have to pay and you don’t because I’m willing to bet you’re very very much less productive, I do feel slightly victimized and, since I still have some right to free speech, I will say what I please.
Let’s just Look at your example, Danny. What moron cuts his prices 50% when they immediately go into deficit in doing so? If the government could collect from the post office enough to pay for operations, then it would do that and not subsidize. If you don’t call that abysmal, do yourself a favour and don’t start a business, dear.
Medicare is abysmal because the people currently using medicare are now taking out of the system way more than they ever paid in. And who did those projections? Why, the government. And what’s the other reason for Medicare’s bankruptcy? Why, politicians raiding it regularly. But, you “progressives” find nothing offensive or “abysmal” about that.
Of course you can judge how well a business is run by whether you need subsidies to keep it on life support. If the government didn’t always do an abysmal job of running things, then the Soviet Union, Europe and Japan would have overtaken the U.S. economy decades ago.
“Lazy half-wits”… do you even realize how arrogant you sound?
Do you realize 1.) that you sound like a sheltered child who has never had serious business with the post office and 2.) how little I care if you find me arrogant? You haven’t earned my respect for me to give a crap what you think of me.
Thanks – I do my best
RE: “If you don’t call that abysmal, do yourself a favour and don’t start a business, dear. ”
Wow – you’re COMPLETELY missing my point. My whole point is that it’s not a sign of abysmal performance precisely because it is not a business, and it’s nonsensical to use the measures of a for-profit business to evaluate the performance of a non-profit organization or non-profit government. The whole point is subsidization.
RE: “Medicare is abysmal because the people currently using medicare are now taking out of the system way more than they ever paid in. And who did those projections? Why, the government.”
Methinks, don’t you realize this is true of private insurers too? Why do you think premiums are increasing? Because costs have increased more than private insurers projected they would. And private policy holders are taking out more than they put in.
RE: ” But, you “progressives” find nothing offensive or “abysmal” about that.”
I can’t speak for progressives – ask them what they think about that.
RE: “Of course you can judge how well a business is run by whether you need subsidies to keep it on life support.”
Yes, but NEWSFLASH – the government is not a business!!!!!!! Why in the world would you evaluate it the way you would evaluate a business?
I should have said “price advantage”… typing too fast. The price advantage at least in that one instance for USPS is probably due at least in part to the fact that it can run deficits.
Granted all your points apply too.
Interesting! I’ve never heard of that exception. Do any private carriers currently offer that service?
I’m not making a case for the post office – in fact I specifically said we don’t need it. I just want to make sure we make the RIGHT case against it, and not a spurious case against it.
I can’t imagine that anyone could deliver a letter in less than 12 hours for less than $3.00. I guess we could hypothesize some rare scenario. But it would be too infrequent to build a business on.
USPS also enjoys a monopoly on delivery mailboxes. So a competitor would be required to deliver the letter to a human hand. That’s the expensive part. When I did cost analysis for FedEx – in the 80′s and 90′s – I was amazed at the cost to accomplish the final delivery of a parcel or overnight letter. It’s much higher than the USPS action of just placing a letter in a mail slot or mailbox.
Oh I’d imagine not. I just didn’t know if you knew of that exception because there’s some rich guy out there with a jet, a desire to get in the Guiness Book of World Records, and some free time on his hands
Yes, but NEWSFLASH – the government is not a business!!!!!!!
Isn’t it? Perhaps you should tell politicians that because that’s exactly what they think they should be running business.
Delivering mail is a business. If it’s not a business, what is your definition of “business”?
If government insists on doing something the private sector should be doing, then why can’t we evaluate it on the same basis? If we can’t use the same evaluation technique, then what evaluation technique should be used that actually makes sense?
Methinks, don’t you realize this is true of private insurers too? Why do you think premiums are increasing?
No, it actually isn’t. That’s not how private insurance works. Premiums rise because they have to cover the price of cutting edge technology and pharmaceuticals, private payers subsidize socialized health care in foreign countries and medicare and medicaid here and because of people’s specific condition. They’re not independent systems, unfortunately, and it’s even more complicated than that.
Private insurers force the individual to bear some of the cost of his own care. Medicare is just another ponzi scheme.
I’d think an economist like you would understand there are costs associated with driving a vehicle, other than fuel allowance, particularly the per mile cost of the vehicle itself. Which happens to be the single largest expense, not to mention that pesky insurance, routine maintenance and the occasional repair.
See above.
I understand quite well that there are costs to owning a vehicle, other than fuel. But I have to buy insurance whether I drive to Vegas (or DC), or not. I also have to pay for the vehicle whether I drive it to Vegas (or DC), or not.
The $700 that I’d save by driving to DC versus taking the train will pay for insurance, oil changes and other routine maintenance for the whole year, and even a set of new tires that will last a helluva lot longer than a year.
So please, Mr Statist, show me how it’s more economical to take Amtrak rather than drive?
I hope that you don’t think that you’ve done a credible job of defending Amtrak. And way to gloss over the fact that only a government-run business could believe there’s more money to be made in Needles than in Las Vegas.
But then you never answered my question as to why it’s any of your business if people want to suck water out of their A/C coils – and bear the cost of doing so – just to live in Las Vegas.
“Delivering mail is a business. If it’s not a business, what is your definition of “business”?”
Delivering mail is an activity that can be run as a business. My father in law lives about ten miles away from me. We delivered his birthday card to him. Does that make me a business?
Re: “No, it actually isn’t. That’s not how private insurance works. Premiums rise because they have to cover the price of cutting edge technology and pharmaceuticals, private payers subsidize socialized health care”
Of course some of the premium increase goes towards subsidizing what isn’t completely compensated by Medicaid and Medicare – but that doesn’t mean that Medicaid and Medicare costs and premiums aren’t ALSO increasing becasue they also pay for cutting edge technology and pharmaceuticals. Costs in the public and private sector are both rising because of the same supply and demand forces acting in the market.
The point is, if you got a private insurance plan twenty years ago, you’ve seen a premium increase since then. Why? Because just like in Medicare or Medicaid, insurers twenty years ago didn’t anticipate the cost increases. So to pay for people getting care NOW, private insurerers have to raise premiums.
That’s not a Ponzi scheme, that’s unanticipated cost increases and it happens for both private and public insurers.
Daniel, why are costs increasing? I can tell you it isn’t just because MRIs are proliferating. Illegal aliens for one. $200K medical loans that need to be paid off is another. You can’t get away with just saying “costs increase” as though magically.
Daniel, I didn’t ask you how your father-in-law receives his birthday wishes. I asked you to define “business”. Why is a company that collects a fee from users to perform a service NOT a business?
That’s not a Ponzi scheme, that’s unanticipated cost increases and it happens for both private and public insurers.
Clearly you know absolutely zip about medicare and medicaid and I have neither the time nor the patience to drag you out of your ignorance kicking and screaming.
Stick to the post office: Why is it not a business? What metrics if not deficits and profits (or at least not a deficit) to measure success or failure?
My apologies for not providing you with an annotated list.
I agree illegal aliens and school loans contribute – again, though – they contribute to both public and private insurance costs.
And I’ll throw in medical malpractice for good measure.
Do you need any more?
It’s good that we agree on those things. From there we can have a real debate on how to fix it.
Is this really going to be another methinks-semantics-battle?
OK, I consulted the dictionary and it gives a variety of options, from the vague “purposeful activity” (which I suppose my birthday delivery and USPS fall under) to the specific “commercial or sometimes industrial activity” which clearly neither fall under, to the more colorful “a bowel movement, used especially for pets” (which neither my birthday delivery, the USPS, or FedEx fall under).
Rather than drag this semantic battle out too, maybe I should just clarify – the USPS is not a for-profit enterprise and it doesn’t have the mission of a for-profit enterprise, and therefore it should not be treated like a for-profit enterprise. I really hope you’re able to grasp that clarification. I can’t believe how this stuff gets dragged out sometimes.
As for Medicare and Medicaid – Medicare and Medicaid pay for medical care in the same market, they get the same tests that everyone else gets, they use the same doctors and equipment that everyone else gets. There are idiosyncratic factors impacting cost that impact only Medicare and Medicaid or only private insurers. But if you think the underlying drivers of cost are different, or if ou think that premium changes aren’t tied to costs in both systems, I’m not sure where else to take this with you. It’s not even worth having the discussion anymore.
Broto, you can suck on anthing you want.
I’m not defending Amtrak, i’ m pointing out your asinine understanding of economics.
With your conception of cost a person could buy a new car with cash, get insurance and a tank of gas, drive it one mile for a total cost $25,000/mile and then drive till it runs out of gas for free.
The IRS allows .55cents/mile because that is what it costs to drive a car. Unless the mileage allowance is another government conspiracy.
So please Mr. Anarchist, try to answer without ad hominems if you can.
You tell me I can suck on anything I want, and then admonish me about ad hominems?
The IRS calculates at $.55-per-mile, because your time is also a cost. I hope you can differentiate between time spent working and time spent vacationing?
I don’t have to go to DC, so I can imagine a scenario, where I say, “Honey, it’s going to cost $1300 for the four of us to take the train to DC, and $3500 to fly. If we drive, even if we have to stay a night in a motel, it’s not going to cost more than $700. Since we’re going to take the trip, anyway, the money we’d save by driving could be used to buy a new TV, or even to pay the insurance on the car for the next year.”
Perhaps your conversation would be more like, “Honey, we could drive to DC for $700-or-so, but if we take the train, we can pay $1300 and really help the government!”
BTW, you still didn’t answer why it’s any of your business whether people choose to live in Vegas if they bear the cost for doing so. Apparently, because the only logical answer is, “because I’m a busybody, and it’s not convenient to the debate to admit that”.
You are wrong regarding mileage expense.
You are wrong about cost amortization or whatever the proper name for it is.
You are right about the ad honinem, it was so beautiful and I was weak.
Regarding having people suck on AC coils for drinking water: they can suck as hard and as long as they want, as long as they haven’t been forced to do so by some polluter that has poisoned the water supply. That was the point of the AC post.
i apologize for the ad hominens and I will refrain from them in the future unless provoked.
I hope you will accept it’
If, by provoked, you mean, “because I disagree with you”, then duly noted.
If, by provoked, you mean an ad-hominem was aimed at you first, then apology accepted.
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