>I have no idea why people think the USPS is this giant wasteful pit of money in the federal budget

A concentrated disinformation campaign funded by people who stand to benefit from privatizing mail delivery. It started with the mandate to pre-fund pension and healthcare benefits for the next 75 years, funding pensions for retired employees who aren't even born yet. That means by federal mandate, the USPS is sitting on $400 billion that they can't touch [1]. That's not all bad in and of itself, but they're also limited by law on what they can charge for stamps, and the federal review board doesn't always let them increase prices to keep up with costs [2].

The same group of people who forced the USPS into an precedented fiscal nightmare are the same people going on TV and telling you that the USPS is fiscally irresponsible and a waste of money and should be privatized. Not a big surprise that Rep Tom Davis III was the author of the bill passed in 2006 but in 2004 FedEx was one of his biggest campaign contributors.

[1] https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/be-careful-what-you-assume

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/id/39439918

[3] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr6407

[4] https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors...

This is happening everywhere with all kinds of government services. "Slash budgets" and by firing full time employees and cutting investment, piecemeal it out to the lowest-bid contractor, the quality of service deteriorates, not much money is actually saved, but someone gets rich(er)!

And when the service fails, you can point to it as the reason government solutions don't work and how regulation is bad, which provides convenient reasoning to strip more regulations and privatize more government services.

And it has a name as well : Starve the beast.

Like every political push, the intent was noble. But it only gains legs when some entrenched interest can profit.

Noble? Maybe... I'd say it's dishonest at best. If the USPS failed on its own, there might be a point to the argument that the government is inefficient. But when lawmakers destroy something and then claim that it destroyed itself and therefore we must destroy everything else, it doesn't quite seem right.

It's like smashing a window with a baseball bat to prove glass is easily breakable. Yes the glass broke, that's why you don't hit it with a baseball bat. Rather than replacing the windows with brick, how about just not hitting it with a baseball bat? If you want to prove how easily breakable the glass is, let is break (or not) on its own.

You're responding on a completely different level than what I actually said.

> If the USPS failed on its own, there might be a point to the argument that the government is inefficient. But when lawmakers destroy something and then claim that it destroyed itself and therefore we must destroy everything else, it doesn't quite seem right.

To be clear, I agree with this. I like the USPS, and think they do a great job.

The point is that grassroots support for "starve the beast" didn't start out focused on the USPS. The USPS was just one of the more vulnerable targets, plus some business stood to gain, so politicians directed the ire there. It's similar dynamic to how in these "government shutdowns", national parks close but the TSA keeps right on going. Or locally, how trying to keep real estate taxes down ends putting the screws on teachers and firefighters, rather than shrinking the town bureaucracy.

The larger point is to avoid simplistically ascribing the worst intent to the "other team". It's an easy answer, but prevents understanding that they actually have legitimate points. And it drives adherence to the agenda of your familiar team, which is also busy manufacturing consent for corporate agendas in a similar manner.

>the quality of service deteriorates, not much money is actually saved,

not only does the service get worse but cost actually goes up.

>It started with the mandate to pre-fund pension and healthcare benefits for the next 75 years, funding pensions for retired employees who aren't even born yet.

This is wholly inaccurate. All that the USPS is being required to do is set aside money to pay for pension liabilities that they have incurred. Nothing close to funding pensions for employees that have yet to be born.

Besides, this is all hypothetical as the USPS has not actually made the payments they were supposed to.

>the USPS has not actually made the payments they were supposed to

That's so 100% disprovable, so easily disprovable, disproven by the first link in the comment you directly replied to, that I'm have a hard time assuming good faith in your argument as the HN guidelines tell me to do.

He’s correct. If they had made the payments they were suppose to, the health benefits account would have been fully funded by 2017. Because they didn’t, it is only half funded and is running deficits.

I'm reading the first link and I see language like "83 percent," "50 percent funded," and "unfunded by $86.6 billion." Are you interpreting treis' comment as "hasn't made any of the payments?" Because I read it as, "hasn't made all of the payments," which seems accurate.

The USPS has missed most of they payments, not making a full one since 2010. The health benefits fund (the 50% one) was the only one that needed to be funded and much of that funding came from transfers from the other, overfunded, pension accounts.

Anyway, the point is moot, since the prefunding period is over and the payments are now on the permanent schedule. Because the Post Office couldn’t fully find the account, the fund is now running deficits and will be depleted in a decade.

"Hasn't made any of the payments" is the only way to read it when they're saying "it's hypothetical". Once the first payment is made, it's not hypothetical any more. It's real money. The USPS only stopped paying because they were more than $8b in debt and could no longer afford the $5.7b per year they needed to pay. Which goes to prove the point that Congress is intentionally taxing them out of business.

If I owe you money and I stop paying and my argument for stopping paying you is that I don't have any money left, do you claim that my money problems are hypothetical because I haven't paid it all? No. They're very real, highlighted by the fact that I can't pay the rest.

>I'm have a hard time assuming good faith in your argument as the HN guidelines tell me to do.

Seriously? You should Google before becoming quite so self righteous:

>It is not the first time the Postal Service has missed its required payments to prefund retirees’ health benefits. From 2012 through 2016, the agency failed to deliver nearly $34 billion toward its pool for retirees’ health care.

https://www.govexec.com/management/2017/09/usps-defaults-bil...

Please explain your use of the word "hypothetical". That might be where I am getting confused. Because the only way I'm interpreting that statement is "the USPS can't blame this law for their money problems because they haven't even made any payments"

At best, I might be able to twist the words to say "the USPS's money problems aren't real because they can't afford to pay their debt", which makes no sense.

The reality of the situation is the $5.7b they're required to pay every year is more than they can afford to pay, so they paid it until they reached $8b in debt and then stopped paying. None of that is hypothetical in any way.

I don't know where you got your numbers but they certainly don't reflect reality. As my cite says, they missed ~34 billion worth of payments. As your cite says they're missing 86 billion dollars that they need to pay their pension obligations.

>Please explain your use of the word "hypothetical".

Hypothetical as in they are not actual real outflows of cash from the USPS. They can't be blamed for the USPS' financial woes since they haven't made a payment in 7 years now.

Yes, set aside liabilities for 75 years in the future. They effectively have to fund people before they're born, unless you think they've got a lot of workers who'll be there over 75 years old.

So, yes, they have to fund. And they're struggling because they're being subject to deliberate and malicious political attack on public services.

>Yes, set aside liabilities for 75 years in the future. They effectively have to fund people before they're born, unless you think they've got a lot of workers who'll be there over 75 years old.

They have to set aside money to pay pension obligations that they have incurred to their current employees. No money is being set aside to pay pensions for workers who have yet to be born. A tiny fraction of the money set aside may be paid out in 75 years, but it won't be to a worker that has yet to be born. It would be paid to a current USPS employee that is still living 75 years from now.

>So, yes, they have to fund. And they're struggling because they're being subject to deliberate and malicious political attack on public services.

For other reasons, perhaps, but not for the pre-funding requirement.

What other government agencies pre-fund or have been forced to make up their funding?

Is a pay-as-you-go pension really a smart option if your #1 product/mandate (first class mail) is at total risk of becoming irrelevant in the near-term?

Those aren't the only options. It's hard to argue that the goal isn't the complete destruction of the USPS when you mandate they pre-pay pensions 75 years in advance and then forbid them from raising prices to fulfill that mandate.

If the USPS is going to become irrelevant in the near-term, does stockpiling 75 years worth of pensions really make sense?

We agree that the pension obligations are the reason why the USPS (once one of the most innovative logistics organizations in the world) has degraded so throughly. But pointing to shadowy private interests is backfilling personal politics into the narrative. The obvious culprit of USPS' debilitating pension obligations the pensioners themselves.

The pensioners create the pension system of their employer?

Its a common misconception, and it is driven by political interests that want to dismantle public services and replace them with more expensive services that have a profit margin for themselves attached.

For me it's not a misconception. 99.99% of things delivered by USPS are spam at my house. I don't even get paper statements for any of my bills. 100% of things delivered by UPS/FedEx/etc are useful things I want to get. Every time I go to the mailbox is an encouragement to get rid of the USPS. My life would literally be better if USPS didn't exist.

> 99.99% of things delivered by USPS are spam at my house.

How is that the fault of the USPS? Mail "spam" wouldn't go away if UPS/FedEx took over the postal service via privatization.

I've heard of people blaming socialism for spam, and the answer is to privatize the USPS...as if more capitalism would solve the problem.

I don't get that kind of logic at all.

I'm required to facilitate the USPS's delivery of this spam by maintaining a box in my yard if I want to ever get anything from them at all. If UPS/FedEx start leaving garbage in my yard I can sue them for littering on my private property.

Cool, we'll destroy a public service that hundreds of millions of people rely on just so we don't inconvenience you any further.

Hundreds of millions of people are forced to rely on it. I can't be the only person who sees the primary role of the USPS is to deliver garbage to my front yard.

The benefit of UPS/FedEx is if they start leaving garbage in my front yard, I can sue them for littering.

If the USPS goes away there will be a very short adjustment period when private organizations and official government changes its mailing practices, but it will all be fine. I'm willing to make a compromise where the federal government can require that regular (weekly?) mail delivery be available everywhere in the country, and if it's not available from private sources the government can create one. So if you're in the boonies of the northern most territory of Alaska, you'll get weekly mail or something delivered by government subsidized mail service.

USPS delivers packages too. You're either not looking closely enough at the shipping labels or you don't order from a variety of merchants. In general, USPS seems to make sense for smaller businesses that ship small packages. There is also MailInnovations/SmartPost where UPS/Fedex dumps packages at the local "inefficient" post office for last mile delivery.

Raising the lowest price for sending junk mail to the prices of UPSFedex would certainly reduce spam, but this has nothing to do with how the services are governed.

FWIW it appears you're free to individually act on your desire: https://www.quora.com/U-S-Postal-Service-Do-I-legally-have-t...

You advocate for regulating the USPS to reduce the delivery of SPAM if you want. I'm happy to just see them disappear. Why should I care to have government regulate a service provider into providing a better service when a better service already exists?

In practical terms I cannot stop having a mailbox, because a few times a year a check or something comes in the mail. That means I would have to go get my mail from the post office every so often and go through it all. So all that's accomplished is I have to drive a few miles down the road to pick up my USPS garbage instead of having the garbage delivered into my front yard. If the USPS didn't exist at all, everyone (businesses, official government notifications, etc) would switch to the better service providers like UPS/FedEx.

What is this better service that delivers letters for around the current clearing price (< $1) and prevents/polices spam? AFAIK Fedex is around $30, which is the overwhelming reason spammers don't use them.

FedEx letter is $7-10.

http://www.costhowmuch.com/ps/fedex-letter.htm

Of course, that comes with a guaranteed delivery date, insurance, tracking, etc. I'm sure the private carriers would charge more than the USPS if they were servicing the lowest end mail, but currently the USPS is monopolizing that.

Also important to note that the USPS is subsidized by the spam they deliver which primarily winds up in the landfill. If the USPS wasn't filling everyone's garbage bin with bulk rubbish every day, their clearing price would be closer to private shippers. To put a scale on that, I have one trash can in my house that is at my desk and only winds up getting garbage mail tossed in it. Every two weeks I have a 13 gallon garbage bag full of mail garbage. What is the time-cost of every household in my city dealing with that much extra junk? What is the environmental cost?

A valuable service which they charge money for, and should generate revenue to cover their costs.

Pension funding politics aside, I want to pay USPS postage fees which cover the cost of the service they provide. There’s no reason to be paying below cost postage to USPS. I find that their rates are extremely competitive, particularly priority mail flat rate compared to UPS or FedEx.

I think the post office could be doing a lot more digital services in 2020 and I’d love to see a lot less junk mail, it would be nice if they could centralize the opt-outs.

You can't put aside the pension funding politics but still want to pay the USPS more, since the price of postage fees is set by federal law and must be approved by Congress. The reason you pay below cost to the USPS is because Congress demands it.

I think this is no longer true for some time now.

> It should be noted, however, that the 2006 postal law sought to provide the Postal Service with increased pricing flexibility and to promote simpler, quicker and more efficient process for changing postage prices. [1]

I think by and large current rates cover the costs. There is a weird international looohole which they are closing. We should not be subsidizing free shipping from China.

My point is mainly I don’t want to see taxpayer subsidies in excess of postage. I believe without the pension funding weirdness the USPS would be about break even, but there’s lots of conflicting information.

[1] - https://www.prc.gov/faqs#t8n185

The other part about increasing postage is that people are asked to pay more, but they don't necessarily see an improvement in the service that comes with the postage. I think about this a lot with public transit too, what a lot of people pay at the farebox doesn't necessarily cover the cost of the ride.

Fairbox recovery rates [1] in the US tend to be around 15-20%. The rest is made up from public subsidies. In the most heavily utilized subway systems, the ratio can increase to around 50% (NYC). [1]

It depends how you count the revenue, but by some accounts public transit is more heavily subsidized by State and Federal government than driving. This is especially true on a per-passenger-mile basis.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

Isn't the marginal cost of a rider nearly zero? What kind of public transit are we talking about?

But isn't the junk mail where they make a ton of their money?

I'd be willing to pay to not receive it.

I would too, but I would never support that as an official policy option, due to the extortion angle.

> I have no idea why people think the USPS is this giant wasteful pit of money in the federal budget

Because republicans have spent decades trying to kill it. Before the post office was forced to pay pensions fund up front by republicans [1] it was self sustainable.

https://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432

This is a meme with no basis in reality.

> Because republicans have spent decades trying to kill it. Before the post office was forced to pay pensions fund up front by republicans [1] it was self sustainable.

The PAEA was passed unanimously in both chambers of Congress and with the support of two of the employee unions. source: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr6407

The pre-funding period ended in 2017 -- Current retirees are paid from this fund. Since the USPS missed the majority of its payments to the PRHB, the fund is currently running deficits and will be depleted by 2030. source: https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/694188.pdf

That means that even if it was "Pay As You Go", it would not be self sustainable.

Where does your first source list the votes or state the support of employee unions?

The first source has a history section that details the Senate and House votes. There is no record of the votes because it was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and without challenge in the House.

The NALC actually deleted their page in support of the legislation but luckily it's archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20130805121847/https://www.nalc....

> Thanks to NALC and a coalition of other unions (the Rural Letter Carriers and the Mail Handlers), management associations, vendors and mailers, Congress rejected almost all the negative recommendations of President Bush’s blue-ribbon Commission on the Postal Service. Instead it crafted a balanced compromise that emphasized pragmatism over ideology.

> Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) were instrumental in negotiating the final details with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the bill’s chief sponsor in the Senate. In an e-Activist message sent on December 9, NALC President Bill Young thanked Waxman and Carper for advocating NALC’s interests in the legislation. He also thanked Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Daniel Akaka (D-HI), and Reps. Tom Davis (R-VA), Danny Davis (D-IL) and John McHugh (R-NY) for their roles over the years.

I didn't even know until about a month ago that the USPS is one of the only constitutionally-mandated federal institutions (in school, we focused a lot on the Bill of Rights, not so much on the articles themselves).

I don't think this is quite right. The Postal Clause give congress the power to establish the USPS. It doesn't mandate that they do so. If Congress decided the USPS was no longer necessary (not a position I advocate), they would be well within their rights to pass a law abolishing it.

The purpose of the mail (or any business) is not employing people.