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