[S3E12] I'll Be Seeing You
Giles shows Buffy the syringe, and explains that it's a special mixture that is designed to take away her strength temporarily, and that he's been injecting her with it for the Cruciamentum, a test that every slayer must go through when/if they reach their eighteenth birthday. The objective was to test Buffy's other skills such as intelligence and resourcefulness by sending her to the Sunnydale Arms where she would be locked in with Kralik and would have been expected to kill him without her powers. Buffy is very hurt and tells him she doesn't know him anymore and that he should stay away from her or she'll kill him. Giles assures her that the test is invalidated because of what he has told her and that he will protect her from Kralik. Cordelia shows up to lend some books, but realizes something is happening and decides to leave. Buffy asks Cordelia to drive her home and Cordy, seeing Buffy is in an emotional state, agrees. When she arrives she finds a picture of her mother in the hands of Kralik. Buffy changes her clothes, grabs weapons and supplies, and heads out to find her mother.
[S3E12] I'll Be Seeing You
Right. But the rates are low, still, compared to a lot of other countries. And of course, it was built on the model of people writing letters and sending business mail, which isn't occurring with email as much as it had in the past. So, you have a model that was basically built on a service that people aren't taking advantage of anymore, and they're moving more towards a parcel- and package-delivery model. So, how does that affect a lot of what we're seeing with the reforms, when the model has changed, even though the quick the equipment and systems and the delivery methodology is different today for what people want than what the model was originally conceived as?
Well, certainly, the Postal Service has to continue to be nimble and to move with the times, but I think one of the things we saw, particularly during Covid, is how much the American people still rely on the Postal Service for their daily needs. And you have, you know, whether it's correspondence, cards, letters, financial documents, medicine, we saw a lot of discussion about election ballots being moved in the mail, and even recently, Covid-19 tests are all being moved through the mail. So, we know that this is something that Americans still know is a critical service. And revenue is actually up during Covid. We're seeing more mail moving through, we're seeing people utilize the Postal Service more again, and we think that the Postal Service ought to build on that success, and rather than sort of be defeatist and say, Well, people just don't mail anymore, is to continue to try to make the Postal Service relevant in the American people's lives; keeping rates down; improving service and delivery times; and expanding its usage. And those aren't the things we're seeing coming out of the Postal Service going forward. What we're seeing is a projection of mail decline by 42%, over the next 10 years. And we think that is partly because of rates going up and historic rates, they want to really raise those rates up much higher than they are now, and they want to reduce the service times, and we think that, together, means that the American people will find less value and less bargain in using the mail and may turn to other things, and so we want to keep this something that the American people see as useful. We want to keep the American people posted, and we want the Postal Service to make reforms going forward that'll ensure that, and so we have a lot of work to do. Getting postal reform passed is certainly important, and it helps, you know, reset the, reshuffle the deck here. But to keep the Postal Service strong and useful and delivering for the American people, additional reforms are going to have to continue to be made.
Yeah, there's certainly a lot to deal with, including inflation and all the geopolitical crises we're seeing. The report mentioned the Russian invasion of Ukraine in particular, but said those kinds of issues are really not expected to have a major effect on the real estate market outlook here. They pointed to strong market fundamentals and the economic recovery that we're seeing here from the pandemic as issues that they say will keep cap rates at current levels. You know, as I mentioned at the outset, the demand for warehousing space is really at record levels. We reported on logistics real estate rent trends recently as well, and found that rents for logistics facilities saw record growth last year, both here in the United States and around the world. Another logistics real estate company, Prologis, said this month that rents for logistics facilities actually increased 15% globally and 18% in North America last year, and they predicted growth in the high single digits this year. So, the need for space continues, and current trends are really expected to last. 041b061a72