PO and chicks

[Bossroo]

If you will be ordering chicks next year from your favorite hatchery , please take note ... The Post Office Service just announced cuts to mail delivery that will trim $3 BILLION and the closure of 250 mail sorting locations. Mail deliveries are expected to be delayed by at least a day or more. I guess that the newly hatched chicks will have to get a crash courses in migration navigation, long distance flying with fuzzy wings and survival techniques.

 

[GAchick]

I'm glad that you announced this already. And it's true..... While I don't think Express mail will be affected, I do not know for sure. But, yes, if this concerns anyone, I urge you to write to your congressmen. As well as the Postal Service. But I believe postal officials HAVE made up their minds. The only thing that might help is going to Congress. Your Wednesday paper may not arrive until Monday, if it is mailed to you, and the PO ends Saturday delivery. It is so sad to see the Postal Service reduced to a for-profit business, rather than a universal service for Americans in every corner of the country. I say, raise stamps to .50, and keep the infrastucture in place. Yes, I work for the Postal Service, but fortunately, at this time, my job is not affected. Not so for 173 of my soon-to-be, former co-workers. This is way too much, way too quickly...

 

[kfacres]

With today's technology.. of internet on handheld phones, labtops that can be run while moving down the interstate, and fax machines that can send a peice of paper in milli-seconds- online bill pay, automatic withdrawl, etc... The USPS system is greatly at a disadvantage.

I bet it's been 2 weeks since I've stuck something in my mailbox, and I bet it's been a year since I've bought a book of stamps.

Sorry, but I think in a world that we are in, with the debt that we have... something needs to go- and that's a good place to start.

It's sad that we as a country, have to make people poorer, in order to make the country richer...

PS. I also work for the US- USDA.

 

[galanie]

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I said that for years. I'm a postal retiree myself. The problem with the mail is that it's a service, not a business. Back before 1973, when it was reorganized and no longer got tax money to help operate, everyone was very pleased with the service. Since then, complaints and quality of service has done nothing but go down down down. It's really sad for someone who took pride in their job delivering mail to see what now goes on.

Just my rant. If folks think it's time for the PO to go, then they aren't personally depending on the mail. You'd be astonished at how many people still do. But eh, we all have our opinions.

 

[wyoDreamer]

I think it is going to be a huge reality check for alot of people - and I too was thinking this morning about the chicks and eggs that get mailed.
It will impact me if I decide to raise a breed that is not available in my area - I may be limited to what is offered in the local ranch store anyway because they closed our Post Office 5 years ago. Now all we have is a 2" high 12"x12" metal box that they cannot put the correct mail into. We are always getting the neighbors mail in our slot and our mail in someone else's slot.

Got my cooking spice's catalog last week - missing the first four pages -

Edited becaue I can't proof read today.

 

[CarriageStone]

I spoke with someone in my local Congressman's office yesterday about this. (Congressman Eric Cantor's office.) His aide said that the changes would affect 1st, 2nd, & 3rd class mail. Priority Mail is a money maker for the USPS and would not be impacted by these changes.

 

[ShadyHoller]

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I agree that the USPS has become obsolete and the rest of the world has moved on to alternative methods for communicating, but it is unclear to me how a reduction in USPS service is going to help with the debt. USPS is not funded by tax revenues, except for minor subsidies helping to pay for mail for certain customers with disabilities and costs associated with mailing election ballots. Otherwise, it generates its own revenue by charging for the services it provides. If people aren't buying those services, maybe it's time for the USPS to scale back.

So, to be clear, I'm not in favor of keeping the USPS on life-support when its services are no longer needed... I just don't understand how an employee of the US Govt. would argue that cutting the USPS would somehow help with the national debt.

 

[kfacres]

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I agree that the USPS has become obsolete and the rest of the world has moved on to alternative methods for communicating, but it is unclear to me how a reduction in USPS service is going to help with the debt. USPS is not funded by tax revenues, except for minor subsidies helping to pay for mail for certain customers with disabilities and costs associated with mailing election ballots. Otherwise, it generates its own revenue by charging for the services it provides. If people aren't buying those services, maybe it's time for the USPS to scale back.

So, to be clear, I'm not in favor of keeping the USPS on life-support when its services are no longer needed... I just don't understand how an employee of the US Govt. would argue that cutting the USPS would somehow help with the national debt.

I think the actual costs, would be more than you could imagine-- if it really came down to it... The other thing that I worry about, is what if the uSPS can't afford to pay it's bills--- who's going to step in and fund it? Uncle Sam... more money spent, than we need to.

Besides the point- I think that somewhere along the lines, money that's getting spent in unneeded ammounts needs cut. What do we pay for a stamp? Have you seen some of the shipping rates lately? The only thing I mail out anymore is birthday cards, and receive some magazines... most of them though are online now...

 

[ShadyHoller]

Kfacres, I just reread my previous post, and it sounded punchier in tone than I meant it to. I wasn't trying to be pushy, but I did want to make the point that the USPS is revenue neutral, so it's not a direct culprit in regard to the national debt. When people stop using the USPS, it has to shrink... that's what's happening in the changes currently proposed. (For the record - I'm in the private sector, and I try not to deal with paper mail unless I have to, so I'm certainly no champion of USPS.)

Back on the subject of chickens - if mail gets expensive, perhaps that would result in changes to the hatchery industry. That's a basic rule of the free market: when the costs of doing business change, business has to adapt. The ones that don't adapt are the ones that don't make it.

What would that mean? Perhaps more regional hatcheries would pop up. They might find that they can now compete against the big national hatcheries, once the price of shipping is calculated into the final pricetag. Instead of paying to ship them cross-country, they might be able to trim some costs by serving more local markets. (Obviously, none of this conjecture would apply to industrial chicken farming, where the hatcheries already are located near the big grow-out barns, in order to cut down on trucking costs).

Or maybe that won't happen, and the only change will be more expensive chicks, across the board, for everyone.

If shipping gets really, really expensive, backyard farmers might all of a sudden get a renewed interest in meat birds that sustainably breed true from one generation to the next, so they wouldn't have to import each generation of hybrids.

 

[kfacres]

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