7 ms·

USPS is a service, not a business. Do we look at how profitable the US military is or schools? That being said, USPS used to be profitable until Congress decid

USPS is a service, not a business. Do we look at how profitable the US military is or schools? That being said, USPS used to be profitable until Congress decided that they pre-fund pensions for all new hires (1). They went from making a couple billion a year to losing $5 billion a year. Your statements have no truth in them. Republicans love to actively sabotage profitable and useful public services and then try to defund them by claiming they don't work. As a bootstrapped business owner working out of a rural and very republican community, I'm disgusted by the lies and misinformation people use to try to destroy the USPS. It's literally in our constitution. (1) https://www.thoughtco.com/postal-service-losses-by-year-3321043 https://www.thoughtco.com/postal-service-losses-by-year-3321...

Alupis 6y ago
> USPS is a service, not a business. Do we look at how profitable the US military is or schools? If it was purely a service and designed to be in the red, we wouldn't be having this debate here. No, it's a quasi-private business that manages itself horrendously, and requires routine capitol injection via Tax Payer Bailouts. As a service? USPS is more of a jobs service - employing thousands of unproductive employees that will coast until retirement then enjoy part of that enormous pension.
- dumbfoundded 6y ago
  So you're just going to ignore that Congress made them unprofitable in 2006 by requiring them to do something no private business has to do? Are you going to deny they were profitable before then? You say they're horribly mismanaged and only exist to create bureaucracy. You ignore facts and reality. It seems like you've made up your mind and you won't have reality interject. I pity you and your warped mindset.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Alupis 6y ago
    Look, either USPS is a "Public Service" and it doesn't matter how far into the red they run, or... thy're a business and it does matter, a lot. If they're a "Public Service", then let's stop these emergency bailouts every few years and just fund the darn thing properly. If they're a business, then we need to stop bailing them out and force them to work with what they have, or let people go that are not pulling their weight. After all, their private-business competition has managed to do just this. Either way, pretending this is some new emergency is disingenuous. USPS has been on fire for decades, that is a fact, paper-profits or not. It's about how they operate, at the core. The pension requirement is two-fold. First, to guarantee postal employees they will have a retirement waiting for them, regardless of who the current administration is or what the political tides bring tomorrow. That's huge. The second part is it makes hiring new people quite expensive. That discourages hiring instead of working with the people they already have (~470,000[1]!!!!). It's no secret it's hard to be fired from government jobs, and no secret USPS is the same in that regard. There's likely a massive amount of bloat within USPS that would better be cut than preserved. That alone, chopping dead weight, could help free USPS up from it's current predicament. I'm floored that we have so many people staunchly defending status quo with USPS today. A year ago, we would all be railing about how inefficient USPS is, blah blah blah. But, politics blinds everyone in turn. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#:~:text=The%20USPS%2C%20as%20of%202019,and%20136%2C174%20non%2Dcareer%20employees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#:....
rwmurrayVT 6y ago
The larger issue is that there are a large number of employees who elect not to use Medicare Part B. They continue on the USPS health insurance plan after they become eligible for Medicare. That's not to mention all of the folks who were in the military, got a civil service job, and will retire at 65 with two pensions. If you can suck it up for twenty years in the military and 20 years at USPS your retirement will far exceed the majority of the US. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-pensions--some-key-myths-and-facts/#2788a5f747f5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...
mindslight 6y ago
The pension thing has become a talking point, but it's a red herring. I agree with you that the USPS needs to be defended, but we degrade the discourse when talking past each other with hyperbolic points. Most private businesses no longer operate with defined benefit pensions, because businesses have moved on to defined contribution retirement plans (eg 401k) which are inherently prefunded. Funding retirement obligations at the time they are accrued is a good thing, and we should push for more of it rather than silently indebting future generations. If the USPS was partially compensating workers by promising them a pension out of some future budget, then they were only profitable as long as their assumptions about growth held. We can accept this while still acknowledging USPS as a public service entitled to public funding, especially as needed to get through this accounting change.
- detaro 6y ago
  From what I understood the main problem is that they need to backfill it within 10 years, whereas when similar changes were forced on companies having such pension plans, they got to adjust it over 40 years?

Alupis 6y ago

> USPS is a service, not a business. Do we look at how profitable the US military is or schools? If it was purely a service and designed to be in the red, we wouldn't be having this debate here. No, it's a quasi-private business that manages itself horrendously, and requires routine capitol injection via Tax Payer Bailouts. As a service? USPS is more of a jobs service - employing thousands of unproductive employees that will coast until retirement then enjoy part of that enormous pension.

dumbfoundded 6y ago
So you're just going to ignore that Congress made them unprofitable in 2006 by requiring them to do something no private business has to do? Are you going to deny they were profitable before then? You say they're horribly mismanaged and only exist to create bureaucracy. You ignore facts and reality. It seems like you've made up your mind and you won't have reality interject. I pity you and your warped mindset.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Alupis 6y ago
  Look, either USPS is a "Public Service" and it doesn't matter how far into the red they run, or... thy're a business and it does matter, a lot. If they're a "Public Service", then let's stop these emergency bailouts every few years and just fund the darn thing properly. If they're a business, then we need to stop bailing them out and force them to work with what they have, or let people go that are not pulling their weight. After all, their private-business competition has managed to do just this. Either way, pretending this is some new emergency is disingenuous. USPS has been on fire for decades, that is a fact, paper-profits or not. It's about how they operate, at the core. The pension requirement is two-fold. First, to guarantee postal employees they will have a retirement waiting for them, regardless of who the current administration is or what the political tides bring tomorrow. That's huge. The second part is it makes hiring new people quite expensive. That discourages hiring instead of working with the people they already have (~470,000[1]!!!!). It's no secret it's hard to be fired from government jobs, and no secret USPS is the same in that regard. There's likely a massive amount of bloat within USPS that would better be cut than preserved. That alone, chopping dead weight, could help free USPS up from it's current predicament. I'm floored that we have so many people staunchly defending status quo with USPS today. A year ago, we would all be railing about how inefficient USPS is, blah blah blah. But, politics blinds everyone in turn. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#:~:text=The%20USPS%2C%20as%20of%202019,and%20136%2C174%20non%2Dcareer%20employees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#:....

rwmurrayVT 6y ago

The larger issue is that there are a large number of employees who elect not to use Medicare Part B. They continue on the USPS health insurance plan after they become eligible for Medicare. That's not to mention all of the folks who were in the military, got a civil service job, and will retire at 65 with two pensions. If you can suck it up for twenty years in the military and 20 years at USPS your retirement will far exceed the majority of the US. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-pensions--some-key-myths-and-facts/#2788a5f747f5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...

mindslight 6y ago

The pension thing has become a talking point, but it's a red herring. I agree with you that the USPS needs to be defended, but we degrade the discourse when talking past each other with hyperbolic points. Most private businesses no longer operate with defined benefit pensions, because businesses have moved on to defined contribution retirement plans (eg 401k) which are inherently prefunded. Funding retirement obligations at the time they are accrued is a good thing, and we should push for more of it rather than silently indebting future generations. If the USPS was partially compensating workers by promising them a pension out of some future budget, then they were only profitable as long as their assumptions about growth held. We can accept this while still acknowledging USPS as a public service entitled to public funding, especially as needed to get through this accounting change.

detaro 6y ago
From what I understood the main problem is that they need to backfill it within 10 years, whereas when similar changes were forced on companies having such pension plans, they got to adjust it over 40 years?