Postal Service loses $2.2B in 3 months as virus woes persist | Hacker News Reader

Postal Service loses $2.2B in 3 months as virus woes persist

latimes.com

22 pointsilamont37 comments

A lot of this is manufactured bullshit; it's not losing shit (or shouldn't be). It's being bankrupted by absolutely fucking insane benefits requirements imposed on it in 2006.

From: https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...

> In 2006, Congress passed a law that imposed extraordinary costs on the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) required the USPS to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. This burden applies to no other federal agency or private corporation.

SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS INTO THE FUTURE. This shit would be laughed out the door at any corporation... or any entity that isn't literally trying to be destroyed for no reason.

Look at the actual balance sheet; most of the payments revolve around having to pay for retirement benefits, see labeled "ITEM 1. FINANCIAL STATEMENTS" for yourself: https://about.usps.com/what/financials/financial-conditions-.... The difference is is astonishing close to their loses.. I wonder why... Oh yeah, from the first link I posted:

> If the costs of this retiree health care mandate were removed from the USPS financial statements, the Post Office would have reported operating profits in each of the last six years.

This bullshit privatization push needs to end. Postal workers seem unhappy? No shit, they work somewhere that's being bankrupted for no reason. They're having to make budget cuts because of a manufactured problem. The public makes zero effort to be informed and then listens to shit like this...

Yeah, be stoked they don't hot shit on you porch everyday that's what we probably deserve leaving 'em high and dry like this.

If you like people, and don't think manufacture crisis are cool, call your senators and push this thing through: https://defazio.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/defazi...

It'd _literally_ fix the post office's solvency problem. Oh, also firing the asshole running it would be another stellar move.

I checked the reference but I don't see the numbers.

For the 9 months ending in August 2020, $62 billion in operating expenses. Of which $3.495 billion is allocated to retiree health benefits. Overall net loss is $(7.374 billion)...even without the pre-funding requirements, we have a problemo?

We indeed do friend; they misled you too... gotta love deception through clever accounting, BOTH of those retiree health rows are going to the same fucking thing:

> Additionally, the PAEA established the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund ("PSRHBF") and mandated certain obligations for paying normal costs, the present value of the estimated retiree health benefits attributable to active employees' current year of service, and amortization payments for full prefunding of retiree health benefits. These prefunding obligations, described in greater detail below and in Note 10 - Health Benefits Plans, are unlike expenses imposed on most other federal entities or private-sector businesses that offer such benefits

If you combine the two rows you 5,143 (mil) + 3,495 (mil) for a total of... $8.6 billion; which, would be a profit for the year. And that's during COVID while inefficiencies are being introduced to try and worsen their service and abilities (like pointless budget cuts).

Pensions are something they will have to pay. You can't just not pay into it and say you're now making a profit. That's how you end up with the situation in Illinois or California

Why do you think the USPS shouldn’t be pre-funding pensions? The fact that other organizations don’t do it is not much more than what-about-ism. Type any city or state into your favorite search engine, and follow it with “pension crisis.”

Maybe Congress rightfully saw that the USPS pension fund would be insolvent if they weren’t forced, by law, to properly fund it? Most public pensions in the US are insolvent.

People don’t seem to like it when we kick the financial can down the road. And people don’t seem to like it when we prepare.

> Why do you think the USPS shouldn’t be pre-funding pensions?

Cleat me be clear, I never said that; nor, did I say, that this is some sort of black and white dichotomy between prepaying and not-prepaying for pensions. I said this instance is undo burden for ANY organization. What workforce in the world retires, and then lives for 75 years? That's the only way that would be reasonable. So people are retiring at 40 and living to be 115 so often it's a financial burden on the post office? Or wait they're retiring at 93 and then living to be 168 by the millions?

> Maybe Congress rightfully saw that the USPS pension fund would be insolvent if they weren’t forced, by law, to properly fund it? Most public pensions in the US are insolvent.

No. What you're doing is making up some shit; posing it as a relevant or equal when it fact you have no idea. Don't do that. Either go look up the fucking facts and post them here and pwn me with reality like an adult or keep it to yourself. Do not play devil's advocate for asinine shit.

It is like you interjecting into a conversation on science to say, "well, maybe Newtown only gravity upside-down? Some photons are yellow."

> People don’t seem to like it when we kick the financial can down the road. And people don’t seem to like it when we prepare.

And concluding with "People don't seem to like it when science is right. And they don't seem to like when its wrong."

I'm not trying to be rude, but it almost feels like your post was made by GPT3.

I’m not going to continue to engage with a child that has an obvious anger problem. You should be banned from HN for this comment.

If you’re going to rage on the internet you should at least understand the topic. 75 years of medical expenses doesn’t mean 75 years for individual people.

> What workforce in the world retires, and then lives for 75 years?

It's clear you don't understand how the accounting works.

> It'd _literally_ fix the post office's solvency problem. Oh, also firing the asshole running it would be another stellar move.

Exactly, and I'm also scared at how open the current administration is about trying to break the postal service right before a record mail-in election. Call it absentee voting fraud, then appoint a partisan postmaster to mix up the organization as much as possible and make changes intended to cause mail delays. Plus the comments about delaying the election. I thought that the election and literally the basics of our democracy are where this craziness would stop, but now it feels like the news I'm getting is from some third world dictatorship, not America. I don't know what will happen if (and hopefully when) he loses, but it won't be pretty.

The postal service is a public service, and if we have to run it at a loss for a while that’s fine. Nobody expects the road system or the military to pay for itself.

I have not had a positive interaction with USPS in years. I don't understand why our taxes subsidize people to hand-deliver junk mail. What an inefficient use of taxpayer funds. With the exception of federal mail, why not jack the prices up tremendously? Stamps are 55 cents now per letter. Make them $1.50 and make everyone else rent a PO box or do digital scanning.

They deliver the junk mail because it keeps the economy of scale needed to deliver other mail. Ironically, it is subsidizing the tax payer.

I think I’d be ok with them charging a very expensive rate for junk mail. That’s not really the kind of traffic I’d regard as a public service so yeah, make as much profit as possible on it.

They’d probably be better off just charging people for the ability to opt out of junk mail.

In 2006, Congress passed a law which required the USPS to fund _75 years_ worth of employee pensions in advance. You wanna talk about taxes being wasted? Go look at Congress; they've been trying to kill the USPS for years.

I encourage you to read this whole article. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/15/afl-cio/wi...

Thank you for the interesting article. The comment about the pre-funding requirement removing their ability to make capital investments to improve infrastructure and systems was notable.

This pension-funding question comes up a lot, but I think it's a total distraction from the larger debate about the profitability of a public mail system. If we're debating whether, I dunno, a bake shop is a viable kind of business, the fact that the bake shop in question promised devastatingly large pensions to its employees decades ago is obviously an important fact about the state of that bake shop at this actual moment, but it does not tell us much about the general viability of bake shops, which is the thing actually being argued about.

It's like asking if a family can live on $50k a year but then stipulating that oh by the way in this family the father gambles 90% of his earnings away at the casino on payday. It doesn't really answer the question.

Good news! The USPS is self-funded. Your taxes do not pay for subsidising people to hand-deliver junk mail.[0][1]

[0] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/five-things/the-u-s-po...

[1] https://facts.usps.com/top-facts/

Why do people think taxes pay for the USPS?

> I have not had a positive interaction with USPS in years. I don't understand why our taxes subsidize people to hand-deliver junk mail.

They don't. Junk mail subsidizes everything else USPS delivers, and USPS is entirely self-funded.

Prices are controlled by congress because otherwise the union would use its monopoly to charge high prices and pay itself princely salaries.

The article quotes him as saying the post office has a “broken business model” but provides no further details.

Anyone found he text of his remarks or otherwise know what he believes the business model is and in what way he thinks it is broken?

I don't really think of civil service jobs as having a business model at all. I get that they charge for services to cover some of the costs, but isn't the post office supposed to be a benefit to everybody? We won't be better off with UPS delivering all of our mail.

Why are so many of the anti-USPS comments coming from new accounts? I'm not going to call them out directly, but most of them seem to be 1-3 months old

USPS will eventually provide e-mail addresses, and other government papers will require a USPS provides email address to conduct business. And they can then charge to both send and receive To or from these addresses. Then they can phase out paper letters / express mail and leave physical package delivery to private companies.

"IRS" scammers are salivating at the opportunity of official email accounts for every American.

They just need to elevate email fraud to the same seriousness level as mail fraud.

Wire fraud is, last I checked, pretty heavily punished in theory, and yet attempted phone-based scams (and of course email based) are just a constant fact of life.

And all the people outside America in countries with no policy with America or where the countries aren’t eager to send their citizens over?

Maybe they should start charging Amazon more money to deliver packages than what it actually costs the USPS? Nah that's crazy.

False claim.

Citation needed...

Politifact Article stating the Postal Service doesn't lose money delivering Amazon Packages:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/apr/02/donald-tru...

I don't believe that's a reliable source, sorry.

The politifact article cites its sources, including https://about.usps.com/news/statements/080117.htm which says "By law our competitive package products, including those that we deliver for Amazon, must cover their costs."

Whats your source that they charge amazon less than it costs them to deliver?

Feel free to link the sources from your Facebook feed claiming otherwise. You're clearly the type to thoroughly vet their news source. I have no doubt it'll be ironclad.

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