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Comment by agustamir | Hacker News Reader

Trying to ELI5 this to myself - USPS has to fund their pensions and is forced to keep money aside for it. They are unable to make price increases to account for all this extra money that they have to keep aside since they are a public service. Their competitors UPS, FedEx are not being held to the same standard, and so USPS is losing out? And this makes a convenient excuse to show USPS as a failed org?

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Almost. Non government entities don't offer the kind of unaffordable benefits such as defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare anyway as they became more and more unaffordable.

The whole deferred compensation scheme known as defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare morphed into a way for politicians to push payroll expenses into the future so that they could get elected on "low tax" platforms. They can get away with this because the laws requiring saving for deferred compensation don't apply to government entities.

"Defined benefit" should be replaced with either "100% guaranteed returns" or "tax backed" in order to raise the red flags it should.

Not only that, but UPS and FedEx probably don’t offer pensions at all. USPS will never be able to compete, even if they raised their prices.

I am sure they both offer define contribution pensions like almost all companies do.

In the US, pensions means defined benefit pensions, which cost a great amount more than defined contribution pensions.

With a defined contribution plan, the employer is off the hook immediately after giving the employee the cash.

With defined benefit, the employer is on the hook for all adverse investment performance as well as broader economic turmoil decades into the future.

The same tactics (let's call a spade a spade) is used in my home country to legitimize the end of our political regime.

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