this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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In the US, conservative lawmakers have been waging a quiet war against our postal system for a while now.
Highlights: They forced it to be self-sustaining (cut federal funding), then when that didn't kill it they forced it to, in a very short time frame, pre-fund retirement benefits ahead of time for all current and former employees.
The postal system is more or less dependent on the funds it gets from spam mailers.
Edit: To clarify, I'm not insinuating that the bulk/majority of its income is from junk mail, I'm just stating that its not nothing, so they don't really have an incentive to kill that source if revenue.
Canada as well. There's been pushes to privatize the postal service so they can race to the bottom for profit.
It's very saddening that people fall for this and delude themselves into thinking companies will compete to provide a better service.
Yep, look at phone companies, healthcare, prisons and ISP's in the US to see how privatizing these things shakes out. It's not pretty.
It's one of the only things in the constitution they are required to have. I don't understand how privatizing it was ever constitutional.
The Constitution hasn't mattered for a while, only the parts of it the Court likes... Which is increasingly little of it.
I recently got denied for a public housing program in the US.
I did not find out about this until I was at the local public assistance office for another reason, where I just randomly happened to be told that I was denied by the person who was apparently my case manager.
She said she mailed it a few days ago and was surprised I didn't get it.
2 weeks later and the actual denial letter never arrived.
...
Keep in mind, almost all government assistance programs in most of the US will correspond by you via mail only. If they email or phone call you, well you still need to show up in person or mail them for most important applications.
And... if they mail you something, they'll often give you maybe 10 days (not business days, even though everything they do takes business days) to respond and have your response be received by, or they'll permanently bar you from whatever you are applying for and file it as 'refused to provide documentation.'
So if your shit gets lost in the mail, fuck you, nobody cares!
...
I have said this in various places on lemmy at other times and people seem to think I am joking, but I am not: If anyone from a functioning country wants to do a sham marriage for tax benefits and I can immigrate there, please let me know. Living off of disability payments alone fucking sucks here.
would be so cool if the government did cryptography
I mean... We've always had just as much spam mail.
Where'd all the funding go previously then if it's now all used to support themselves?