Originally Posted by
lostarchitect
+1, and USPS is actually a pretty sound business. The whole "unprofitable" USPS situation was politically created by those who want to kill it off. It was mandated that the USPS had to fund pensions 75 years in advance--more than any private business and any other government agency. They are paying pensions for people who are not employees yet. It's nuts. It adds up to billions of dollars a year in losses.
Yep, that's one of those things that nobody talks about. The whole situation makes me so mad I could spit nails. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is the bailout mechanism for these big corporations that go bankrupt and we, as taxpayers, pay for that. Nobody thinks about that or even says anything about it, yet the USPS has to fund pensions 75 years out. It is fine for a multi-billion corporation to have an underfunded pension, yet the USPS is forced to
overfund their pension system.
Full disclosure here: I an NOT a USPS employee, though I am a proud civil servant who works for a non-defense agency in the federal government.