The reason the postal service is losing money is because it labors under pension obligations the private companies do not.
“For the Postal Service to improve its financial situation, the government must let the USPS manage its financial affairs in the most effective manner possible, like any other business,” he said. “Essential to that process would be for Congress to fix an onerous congressional mandate from 2006, which obligates the Postal Service to make annual payments of $5.5 billion to pre-fund future retiree health benefits. No other institution in America, public or private, has to do this.”
The private companies can throw their pension obligations onto the backs of the taxpayers (and often do) Personally I think all companies should be subjected to this mandate, but lacking that the USPS should be relieved of it. It seems this move was taken with the sole intention of destroying the USPS.
Something the Dog Said wrote:
The Founding Fathers intended for the government to provide postal service per Article I, section 8, clause 7 which authorized Congress to set up a postal system.
Very true, but the Founding Fathers didn't envision on double dippers of the US treasury via pensions.
The U.S. Postal Service will begin the process of closing as many as 2,000 postal offices in March and will review another 16,000 -- half of all existing post offices -- that are losing money, The Wall Street Journal reports
The new round of closures is in addition to 491 that are already being shuttered.
So if the Post office needs to be profitable to stay around why don't we privatize them? They would have a better chance, you would think.
