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Comment by Eridrus | Hacker News Reader

I think the problem being solved here is largely one of waste.

USPS hides 9bn of unfunded pension obligations every year and underserves urban areas to subsidize rural areas.

Mail volume is also generally falling as everything moves to email, so it is getting both less profitable and less critical.

The US is a rich country, we can afford to waste a lot of money and not notice, and of course one person's waste is another person's easier job or subsidized service, but given the ongoing decline in the importance of mail (vs package) delivery, it's not clear that this is a particularly important utility for the government to maintain any more.

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I'm not aware of any organization that has the same requirements to fund its future pension obligations that the USPS has. That requirement was created by Congress as part of a sustained campaign to damage the USPS.

It seems like your argument is actually that Congress should rescind that requirement, so that USPS can afford to better service urban customers while continuing to be a critical lifeline to rural areas.

Well, if postal services were provided by normal private companies, then there would be none (or less) of that kind of political interference you are complaining about here.

USPS is also not paying for the pensions that they already incurred, and those are actually even larger ($20bn/yr).

Anyway, Congress did already rescind the requirement that USPS prefund the pensions (a 57bn debt forgiveness), but this is all just hiding the ball, the 9bn in pension liabilities being incurred now are real. Even if you don't prefund them now, an honest accounting says that these are part of your costs today.

A privatized USPS would likely get rid of pensions entirely.

$240 billion in waste in less than a single year because for Republicans, stirring up shit globally—welp, there's always money for that

Why are we talking about the post office again??

it would be interesting to see the navy make a profit and have to pay for its own pensions for veterans rather than hiding it in the defense budget

I am not super interested in a pirate navy, thanks.

Presumably the navy would sell military services to the government in that case?

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