Hmm, this may be a dumb question, but when the USPS loses money, where does that money come from? I assumed it was just topped up by the government but maybe not.

It seems like they've been getting by so far partly by skipping payments to the pension and health funds.[1] I don't know what they will do once that's not possible. Seek external funding? Sell some post office land? No idea what their options are or what they're allowed to do.

1. https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/us_postal_service_financial_v...

Wow, I guess it surprises me that it seems as if the government isn't paying anything to the USPS, even backstopping it when it has losses.

If that's true and it's not costing the federal government any money, I'm struggling more to see the reason to privatize.

PS...thank you for finding that link!

USPS actually ends up being a net-earner for the US Government. It's actually one of the few branches that has no allocated budget and has enough of an internal surplus that it's actually been able to afford to innovate. However, that shifted in 2006 when it was burdened with pre-paying for retiree health benefits. If anything - we need some deregulation around the post office to allow it to remain profitable, it's currently shackled by the government in what actions it can take and the 10billion in funding offered by the executive branch comes with some really heavy strings attached that'd actually further restrict what it can do to retain fiscal independence.

I think it's also important to take stock in just how well USPS works - if you compare it to CanadaPost the differences are astonishing, USPS has managed to keep the unions happy while also keeping costs relatively low - I'm sure a lot of passionate people poured their lives into threading the needle on how to keep everything running smoothly, it's quite the success case.

Yeah, the more I engage in this thread and topic, the more I'm learning how it seems the USPS does a pretty darn good job.