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Trump targets Amazon in call for postal service to hike prices
U.S. President Donald Trump targeted Amazon on Friday in a call for the country's postal service to raise prices of shipments in order to recoup costs, picking another fight with the online retail giant he has criticized in the past. "Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer? Should be charging MUCH MORE!" Trump wrote on Twitter.
The U.S. Postal Service, which runs at a big loss, is an independent agency within the federal government and does not receive tax dollars for operating expenses, according to its website. The organization makes up a significant portion of the $1.4 trillion U.S. delivery industry. Other players include United Parcel Service Inc and Fedex Corp.
[...] Amazon has shown interest in the past in shifting into its own delivery service. In 2015, the company spent $11.5 billion on shipping, 46 percent of its total operating expenses that year. In October, Bloomberg reported that Amazon was testing its own delivery service to move products more quickly out of its overcrowded warehouses and make more of them available for free two-day delivery. However, Amazon said at the time that it was using the same carrier partners to offer the program as it has used for years, including the U.S. Postal Service, UPS and FedEx.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by legont on Saturday December 30 2017, @06:51PM (3 children)
No, Postal Service is not "like any other". Postal Service is required to deliver mail anywhere even if it is economically not feasible. That's why numerous attempts to privatize the Post Office failed - nobody wants it.
What happens now is that if say Amazon wants to deliver a package to an unprofitable location (such as my house) it uses USPS while for profitable it uses say UPS. Everybody does it including UPS itself - I typically get my UPS packages by USPS.
This my friends is called riding infrastructure and can't be sustained long term. But fear no - bridges, railroads, power grid, nuclear poo storage and so on are all in the same boat. Just hope it all blows up sequentially, not simultaneously.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 30 2017, @08:19PM (1 child)
Amazon isn't paying for this shipping, you are.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday December 31 2017, @10:55PM
I have to admire how much of a prick Bezos is, he doesn't bother to spout "diversity" bullshit and is well-known even in the U.S. for his plantation-like warehouses. And before that he was known for suicidal salaried employees and horrible morale. Oracle is known for having software UIs that are guaranteed to look like shit no matter where you use them, which is a far more egregious crime.
I'm pretty glad to hear that Trump fired across his bow, because Bezos is armed with the always-Neocon Washington Post, where Rob Malda went to work. They are agents of Israel.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday December 31 2017, @01:23AM
"That's why numerous attempts to privatize the Post Office failed - nobody wants it."
There's also the little matter of Article 1, Section 8, #7 of the U.S. Constitution.
When life isn't going right, go left.