I think the cheapest mail the UPS sends is $5.75. That is more than 10 times the price of a regular mail by the USPS, and you want that to discontinue... Also the most common form of letter.... Congratulation on your Republicanism....As the post above showed, the whole "crises" was artificaly created by Congress. Remind me again, why do we have the Congress when we already has the Senate??? Maybe we should get ride of one of them....
Another view...not from mother jones. The key term here..."unfunded obligation." The rest of the gov't has an $860B pot of money - that makes $79M in interest per day - that serves to fund Federal retirements. Before the law, OPM had to constantly borrow from that fund to pay the Postal retirees. I agree the Postal Service should be made profitable...but before this it was being run like Greece. Greece had to eventually get austerity, and so did the Post Office. The Truth About The Post Office's Financial Mess http://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432 Excerpt.... Thanks to these prefunding payments, the Postal Service has greatly reduced its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits. At the end of fiscal year 2010, these obligations were under $49 billion – a substantial sum, but much more manageable. If the Postal Service continues making its prefunding payments, its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits will be around $33 billion by the end of the decade. And the postal service will be on course to pay these benefits over time," a Congressional insider explained. But this pre-funding has become a lightning rod of controversy. Members of the postal workers union say the pre-funding requirement has created a fiscal mess. Some people have even claimed that law has the effect of requiring the postal service to fund retirement obligations for people who are not yet employed by the USPS--potential future employees. No one ever intended the law to work that way. And, in fact, it doesn't. Although accounting rules require the postal service to calculate future liabilities, including those for projected future employees, the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees. LL: So bottom line, the unions claim of the postal service pre-funding pensions for future workers is false? Chairman Issa: Absolutely false. The non-partisan Congressional Research Service recently found that pre-funding requirements match Congress’ intent when they were enacted in 2006. The intent is to ensure that the growing unfunded liability for retiree health care for current employees is covered. These employees negotiated for and earned these benefits with their work, so USPS should pay for them. Likewise, USPS must be self-sustaining, and not funded by the taxpayers. Prefunding is a prudent measure to protect employee’s earned benefits and taxpayer money. LL: Are the postal unions resorting to fear tactics and myths to scare Americans about what is really going on? Chairman Issa: Postal workers who have been writing their members of Congress or protesting are just responding to the information that they have been given by their own union leadership. They have been told this money is not covering their benefits, but in fact covering benefits of people who haven’t been born yet. That’s absolutely false. They have been told there is an overpayment in another pension account that could cover their retiree health care benefits. The non-partisan Government Accountability Office, which audits financial reports for the entire federal government, has weighed in to clearly state that allegation is false. They have been led to believe outrageously false things about Congress “stealing” their money to pay for other things. The truth will get out there and postal union members will finally understand we’re looking out for them as well as the taxpayer. Postal reform is necessary to secure their earned benefits.
%%%%%%%%%%%%% We need to cut gov, not make a bigger mess. I like + use US forever stamps; forever loans seem like horrible idea.
The so called private banks already get to impose on tax payers when they have losses. I don't see why the idea of a bank operated by USPS so controversial. Apparently the US had a post bank between 1911 and 1966. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system
Japan's post office is the largest bank in the country. And it's going to be listed on the exchange. 8:17 pm, October 19, 2015 BloombergTOKYO (Bloomberg) — Shares in Japan Post Holdings Co.’s banking and insurance units were priced at the top of marketed ranges as part of a three-pronged initial public offering, signaling strong demand for the nation’s biggest privatization deal since the 1980s. Japan Post Bank Co. shares were offered at ¥1,450 apiece and Japan Post Insurance Co. was priced at ¥2,200, a Finance Ministry filing showed Monday. The government will raise ¥743 billion from the sales of the units, according to Bloomberg calculations. The price for the holding company will be decided on next Monday. Investors shrugged off a two-month stock-market slump to make orders that exceeded the amount of stock on offer after only two days, people with knowledge of the matter said last week. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is seeking to raise as much as ¥1.4 trillion in the world’s largest IPO this year. The banking arm had been offered at a range of ¥1,250 to ¥1,450 a share, and the insurer had been priced at ¥1,900 to ¥2,200. The holding company is being offered at ¥1,100 to ¥1,400. The three companies will list on Nov. 4. Shares in the postal service, whose origins date back to 1871, are mostly being offered to citizens as part of Abe’s goal to get people to invest more of their savings. Foreign institutions have been allocated 20 percent. Some of the proceeds will be used to rebuild areas in the Tohoku region that were damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. About 11 percent of the three companies will be sold in the IPO, which is set to be the nation’s biggest state asset sale since Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. in 1987. The bank and insurer will eventually be fully divested following later offerings, and at least a third of the holding company will remain owned by the government. Japan Post Bank is the biggest holder of deposits in the country and Japan Post Insurance is the largest insurer by assets. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi first drove the sale plans a decade ago, arguing that the assets would be deployed more efficiently in private hands. The bank, among the biggest holders of Japanese government bonds, is already starting to shift to other securities to boost returns. About 60 firms are working on the IPO. Nomura Holdings Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are the global coordinators.Speech
Sounds like a new, more progressive way for the post office to lose money. The reason banks don't provide services to those people is because it's unprofitable.
A bit of a blanket statement, yes? If you worked in or around government during the last 15 years you would have seen a dramatic shift to outsourcing because of beliefs just like yours that the private sector is always more efficient than government, followed by a dramatic shift back to insourcing because in many cases hiring a private contractor to do a task was substantially more expensive than using government employees in practice. I can provide a number of pretty detailed business cases from my field at the time, which was aircraft maintenance and overhaul. This isn't always the case for sure, a great many things are done more efficiently by the private sector. But "never" and "always" blanket statements generally reveal a black and white view of the world that comes from a lack of direct experience with the subject at hand.