Junk mail - the original and the new

[karavite]

Some time ago I did a little college paper on Junk Mail (paper mail) and I have been thinking about this and its relationship to spam.

Without getting into the nitty gritty - here are a few things I remember. About 70% of all junk mail gets thrown away without even being read (about 40 million tons a year I think). Because almost all junk mail is 3rd class - the post office will not return it. Often times when you get junk mail the group that sold your address to the junk mailer is none other than the good old US Post Office. The rates bulk mailers get are incredibly cheap. What makes it possible as a profitable business is that the rates are so low the junk mailers can afford to print up tons of mail where they know the vast majority of it will be pitched in the trash - just a small percentage of sales is enough to let them make a profit. Since the US post office sells these people addresses and in return gets low rates, the USPS is essentially subsidizing the business of junk mail.

Think about it, if you didn't get junk mail, how much mail would be in your mail box every day? The Post Office is a HUGE portion of our budget - more than welfare for sure - yet most of what it actually does is 3rd class junk mail! The junk mailers are getting not quite a free ride (almost), but an unfair one that costs us all money in our taxes, money for our garbage service (I pay $30 a month for mine and most is junk mail), and time.

Okay, Spam is even cheaper to produce and distrribute, but it isn't supported by some government agency like the post office. Apparently spam is taking a huge toll on internet traffic and that hurts all of us. So it is almost the same thing - a bunch of business people are banking on almost all of uss ignoring their messages this strategy comes at a cost that takes away resources from the rest of us.

As for real mail, I would love to see the USPS out of the 3rd class junk mail business which would happen in a heart beat if it was made more fair and honest (let them send it Fed Ex or UPS - a REAL business like those carriers would not give away a service for a kick back). As a result they would not need their huge budgets and we could enjoy getting only our bills in the mail!

 

[lurk]

Originally posted by karavite

...Since the US post office sells these people addresses and in return gets low rates, the USPS is essentially subsidizing the business of junk mail.

Not to argue that third class postage is not cheep but as I understand it that is really the part of the post office that turns the greatest profit. Delivering first class postage mail by itself is not profitable, the prices for postage are below the cost of delivery. Also in order to get the good rate on junk mail the mailer had to provide it to the post office in a nicely presorted and labeled way. Reading the address I scrawled on an envelope is super expensive by comparison.

Think about it, if you didn't get junk mail, how much mail would be in your mail box every day?

Still too much

The Post Office is a HUGE portion of our budget - more than welfare for sure - yet most of what it actually does is 3rd class junk mail! The junk mailers are getting not quite a free ride (almost), but an unfair one that costs us all money in our taxes, money for our garbage service (I pay $30 a month for mine and most is junk mail), and time.

You are talking about the US (as in United States) USPS right? In the US the post office is a semi-autonomous fee supported entity which does not receive any tax support. (I think that there are some special cases that may still apply but that is just corporate welfare of sorts. ) So modulo special cases $0 of your tax dollars went to support the post office.

I checked google and found the USPS's Annual Report where they nicely inform us that they spent lost $676 million dollars on revenue of $66 Billion dollars. So for 2002 they basically broke even - I can think of lots of businesses that would love to have shown only a 1% loss for 2002.

The $5 dollars a month that "normal" people spend on sending my mail does not cover the costs to the USPS of servicing my address. It is the junk mail that does that. So if you are trying to make an economic comparison between spam and junk mail you will have problems. A better parallel would be to say that junk mail is like banner ads on a website because it is subsidizing the content you want to get.

...snipped spam stuff...
As for real mail, I would love to see the USPS out of the 3rd class junk mail business which would happen in a heart beat if it was made more fair and honest (let them send it Fed Ex or UPS - a REAL business like those carriers would not give away a service for a kick back). As a result they would not need their huge budgets and we could enjoy getting only our bills in the mail!

It would happen in a heat beat if every random Joe was willing to spend $7 dollars on a stamp to send that birthday card to grandma to cover the actual cost of that service. The other option would be to actually support the post office with tax money like you seem to think it is now. That is $66 Billion dollars that will need to start coming out of our taxes in the near future.

Not that I am a fan of junk mail but if you are going to argue against it or (shudder) spam. You need to actually have your facts right or you end up doing more harm than good.

-Eric

 

[Giaguara]

Not a lot. Few letters a month.
But I don't get junk either, I have forbidden the sale of my information to the commercial, relation investigations, research etc purposes.

 

[karavite]

Hey Lurk, I knew there were some flaws in my logic and thank you for your reply. I'm just sick of both kinds of junk mail and I was trying to find some common theme of how both are unfairly taking advantage of some infrastructure. The USPS may be profitable and funded by junk mail, but what about the millions of tons of it that ends up in land fills - whose paying for that, not to mention my time and my own garbage bills. Like Giaguara, I got my names off the lists, but they creeped back to the point where I literally fill 2 garbage bags a week with junk mail.