Our Goverment State,Fereral or local are the wisest users of money that the world has ever known.Steal!shame on you that's as crazy as a UFO sighting . What our duty should be is to always vote for the canadate that wants to raise taxes the most.And should you have a winfall why not donate it your favorite Goverment agency..............
William Rogers..........

Good point. I stand corrected concerning the post office.

...And since these private firms have taken all of this business away from the post office by providing better service for less, and the post office is struggling, then the PRIVATE SECTOR must have been the better approach, as usual, eh?

Mike

__________________
_____
1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
_____
1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

...well Mike, that isn't exactly a fair assessment. The U.S. Postal Service has a legal mandate to provide the broad spectrum of delivery services, including the huge not/barely profitable letter mail stuff. So they spend the vast majority of their budget engaging in marginally profitable activities, while the private players (operating without any mandate other than the profit motive), skim the highly profitable bulk package biz. USPS, which is a quasi-governmental agency, is hamstrung by the social services aspect of its biz model.

Anecdotally, I've always received as good or better delivery services from USPS than "Brown", but that's just my experience. I tend to prefer dealing with public agencies rather than the private sector, but that's just a little peculiarity in my nature.

Lets see, The USPS is a good example of a gov agency that works but it doesn't work well because the gov wont let it but the government subsidizes it to make it competitive yet the private industry still beats it. Have I just about got it?

USPS would work even more efficiently if the gov would pass laws hamstringing the competition by preventing them from entering some delivery markets, like First Class mail, for instance.

Oh wait, that law is already in place....

Botnst

To recap some of the highlights

g-Benz claims government theft is a by-product of indifference

Z claims that big businesses are far bigger thieves than government as they get the government to help steal on their behalf.

300SDLLL says he doesn’t much care if the gov taking money is legal or not, as long as it solves a problem

Narwall, asked: You mentioned municipalities. So you don't have an example?

In Seattle, our property taxes used to pay for street lights. The city council past a resolution, and no voters voted on it, to start charging tax payers for street lighting. After I forget how long, about a year and a half of this, the court said the city couldn’t charge the tax payers for street lighting because they were already collecting for it out of property taxes. Now the city council, who is still charging the fee, is not sure they can repay the earlier illegal tax collection without going further into debt. Wah. They had no legal right to collect taxes for this in the first place. They were trying to shuffle the duplicate bill onto the tax payers to help pay for endless other examples of theft.

Kerry points out the city is getting behind a Wal-Mart project which will put several other folks, who occupy the site wall mart wants to use out of business. And, everyone knows that wall mart will put many more businesses out of work.

Jjl seems to imply that we should count our blessings as taxes in the UK are much higher.

Z in a real thigh slapper added “...cuz profiting from human misery is immoral”

Botnst a few pages later, and perhaps referring how ever tongue in cheek to the immorality of profiting from human misery added: Lets see, The USPS is a good example of a gov agency that works but it doesn't work well because the gov wont let it but the government subsidizes it to make it competitive yet the private industry still beats it. Have I just about got it?

Is it fair to say that since theft occurs so many places that it’s accepted that the gov steals as much as, as well as, in defense of, in the name of, the needs of the people??? Or do they simply do what the please and force the tax payer to pick up the tab?

__________________
...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

Neither of you guys is making an 'apples to apples' comparison.

I find it a bit ironic that I'm stuck defending one of the federal agencies I'm most uncomfortable with because it's so damn privatized -- kinda like getting stuck defending the French in the other thread--despicable, but ya just gotta do it.

This is a lot like the public v. private schools debate. Public schools have a legal mandate to provide educational services to everyone, no matter their particular health, linguistic or pecuniary handicap. Private schools get to skim off some of the wealthier, highly motivated, non-disabled, English as a first language, stable, blah blah blah students, and thus focus their budgets on whatever it is they do in private schools.

Public schools must devote significant portions of their meager budgets to providing educational services to folks requiring 'extra' levels of attention (and budget dollars). Public schools also are increasingly taking on a defacto 'parenting' role for families, where the parents can't or won't spend the time teaching basic social and educational skills. Hence, public schools in wealthier and more stable communities tend to outperform their counterparts in the less well-off areas.

The USPS straddles a creepy dividing line between public and private entities. I'd prefer that they step back and re-focus on being a social services agency, but they're trending toward becoming a purely profit-driven commercial outfit. I think they'll be completely dismantled, and the jobs outsourced to the maquiladoras of Latin America in our lifetimes. Your side is winning this battle.

So.....everything you just said supports my position that the private companies do it better. UPS, Fed Ex, etc. all deliver letters/mail also. There are no quotas on how much paper mail vs. packages that the post office must handle, yet there ARE restirctions on private companies (UPS cannot leave anything in your mailbox--why?).

Most folks take their larger packages to private shippers because they ship more reliably, faster, more conveniently, for less, and that's the bottom line.

Post office: long lines, 1 or 2 people at the counter to serve you
UPS/Fed Ex: short lines, 5 or 6 people at the counter to serve you

Post office: no unconditional guarantee on 3 day, 2 day, or overnight delivery
UPS/Fed Ex: unconditional guarantee on 3 day, 2 day, or overnight delivery

post office: picks up packages upon request? No.
UPS/Fed Ex: picks up packages upon request? Yes.

post office: polite, well-trained employees? Sometimes.
UPS/Fed Ex: polite well-trained employess? Almost always.

Etc., etc...


Mike

__________________
_____
1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
_____
1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

Not making "apples to apples" comparisons?

Do ya think?

You got your private enterprise that offers investors a return on their investment vs coercive government that extorts taxes to subsidize the mail, makes all the rules by force but still cannot compete effectively with private enterprise. Private enterprise has better service and is still able to charge a higher price, even though legally excluded from the most lucrative market, 1st class mail. Could there possibly be a connection?

Its not apples to apples, its gov slug to barn swallow. One that's capable of hauling a coconut from Africa to Europe, not the ....

Botnst

You two are incorrigible idealists. I get stuck arguing boring old reality and you guys get to dream and pontificate about your economic theories--must be nice.