I guess you never heard of the term, "not for profit business"...? They are most certainly a business, just heavily regulated by the US government.
theyre not a business. its a government program to help the country function. whether or not the post office is needed anymore is another argument, but they dont make a profit because theyre not a business. theyre there to make things work with the money they are allotted by elected representatives.
I guess you never heard of the term, "not for profit business"...? They are most certainly a business, just heavily regulated by the US government.
THE POST OFFICE is a semi private business. It used to be a full government entity. It was quasi privatized about 30 years ago.
You guys realize that forever stamps pay better interest then a bank does. I have 3 or 4 k worth in my safe deposit box at the bank. The trick is to buy them on ebay from good sellers. You buy them in July when demand is down. Cost this July was about 800 for 2000 of them. You get ebucks 2% if you buy with paypal and use a paypal credit card 2% on top of that. so the net on 2000 stamps was about 768. That is 38.4 cents a stamp. Every year they jump up a penny or 2 . If I am short a few bucks I sell 500 stamps to a local small busines at 40 cents a stamp.. Otherwise I buy and hold. I don't invest in the stock market so this is the safest investment I can find.
One thing that I've always wondered about forever stamps is their value when used for more than just a letter. If I have a large envelope or letter over the weight of one stamp and I use forever stamps to pay postage, how do I calculate the number of stamps to use? I imagine I'd use the value of current forever stamps, but I could be wrong.
the cost of a forever stamp is 45 cents right now. it will go up to 46 cents starting on 1/27/2013. if you need them, might as well buy them before the price goes up.
https://www.usps.com/new-prices.htm
theyre not a business. its a government program to help the country function. whether or not the post office is needed anymore is another argument, but they dont make a profit because theyre not a business. theyre there to make things work with the money they are allotted by elected representatives.
Actually, the USPS is self-funded. They would in fact turn a profit, if it wasn't for some cockamamie scheme where they have to pre-pay pensions or something like that, that costs them so many million or billion a year, whereas no other gov't office or dept has to do that.
Basically, Congress screwed the USPS, like they almost want it to go out of business.
Seriously, the pension they have to prepay a year is 5 billion or so. They are currently 16 billion in debt and have defaulted twice on the pension payments so far last year and have exhausted their ceiling to borrow from the treasury. I think Congress would like UPS or Fed Ex to buy them and privatize them. But who would want to buy something that has 16 billion and growing in debt a year at the rate of 5 billion a year minimum....
What people fail to mention is that neither UPS nor Fedex has the infrastructure that USPS has built. Both often use the USPS for final delivery.
The USPS is wonderful infrastructure and should be consider a "service", it's not a private business. It allows private individuals and business to make money themselves. Which is what it was intended to be.
PS: Congress (ie; the Republicans) just want to destroy any working government program and then run their mouths about how government programs don't work. The USPS has been a working program for 200 plus years.
They're not a business in the corporate sense. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're losing money running the USPS.
Yeah, and youre wrong. They are losing money because the Republican Congress of 2006 forced a mandate that the USPS pay out retiree benefits 75 years into the future. I think all the clueless right-wingers in here should spend a few minutes reading...