Not sure what the beef is with the USPS here. Their main issue is having to prepay 75 years of retiree health benefits ie. $6B payment due on the 30th. Every other private and public system would only be required to deliver 1/100th the lump payment into the trust based on a projected value at 75 years.
A USA postal service letter carrier told me that the rumor he is hearing now is 125,000 workers are to be laid off January 1, 2012.
So if they stabilize their losses for the next 100 years it's only gonna cost us a trillion dollars. And we won't be needing post offices in about 30 years since everything is going electronic.
You know that both Parties are not going to allow the USPS to fail. We are living among Socialist and their ideas. They "FED"S do not have the balls to cut 120k worth of GOV jobs or to allow USPS to go under. It would be a huge political suicide mission for both parties. So, yes, the TAXPAYER....just like in any Socialistic economy, is going to foot the bill. There is ZERO change coming to this country people. WAKE UP. Does not matter who wins next year. The ideology has shifted and is ingrained in the youth, as well as 90% of the political body in DC that SOCIALISM is the answer. So get use to it and find way's to make money.
We are essentially, for all practical intent and purpose, already there. And the USPS is heavily "subsidized by fiat" by the local, state, and federal governments - they pay no property taxes on facilities, their employee benefits are essentially guaranteed by the Federal government, and they have exclusive commercial domain over post boxes owned by private citizens. What's more, the USPS has exclusive regulated domain over a considerable segment of delivery to private residencies in the United States.