Whenever I do any kind of file transfer using USB, whether to a USB stick, or with my Android phone, or anything else, it is ridiculously slow.

It says 59.8 KB/sec, which would be an awesome speed if this were 1991 and I was using a modem to dial up to my local BBS. Surely USB technology is better than that...? 37 seconds to move less data than the equivelent of 1 MP3 file?

Also, regardless of what it says about speed and time, the reality is much, much slower. I routinely see it say something like "37 seconds left" and have to wait for minutes. Sometimes, if I want to move large amounts of files, it can say it will take 8 hours or more.

Is this normal? My computer may not be the most awesome on the market, and about a year old, but it's an i5 with 4GB RAM and modern components, so surely this isn't the hardware's fault.

What can I do to get better USB data transfer performance?

Also, I did look at this question, but my newbie eyes don't see anything that look like an actual solution, just a lot of discussion about what transfer rates could or should be.

Update: As requested in the comments, I've generated a whole bunch of output from the command line, and put it on Ubuntu Pastebin. Please see it here.