Someone who apparently thinks it's cool for the USPS to subsidize Amazon shipping, and also can't even get straight what media companies Bezos owns, should not be modded up. I invite everyone to head over to MetaMod [slashdot.org], where you can rate the choices the moderators make and give these moderators a bit of a spanking.
Without subsidy the USPS will need to scale down massively, they can't compete in a free market environment.
Even then, they'll always run losses because the international treaties rapes every western postal service. If Trump wants to do something useful he should unilaterally get the US out of the treaty of Bern.
Without subsidy the USPS will need to scale down massively, they can't compete in a free market environment.
The USPS is not subsidized by the US government/taxpayers. Their rates are set by the government, but they operate entirely on the funds that they generate directly.
Even then, they'll always run losses because the international treaties rapes every western postal service. If Trump wants to do something useful he should unilaterally get the US out of the treaty of Bern.
The USPS is profitable. The reported shortfall in their budget was due to congress passing a new requirement (which only applied to the USPS) that they pre-fund their retirement account fully within five years. Meaning that the full retirement package for every postal service employee is fully paid. If every employee retired now (even if the
> that they pre-fund their retirement account fully within five years.
False. The five-year requirement is that every five years they have to calculate how far in the hole they are. (How much they owe to workers who have already worked, or are working on today, and whom they've promised decades of retirement pay to, without funding that promise.)
> If every employee retired now (even if they were just hired and thus are not eligible for retirement benefits...) the full amount of their retirement pension is covered.
Laughably false. They owe over $120 billion to workers who have already done the work and been promised retirement payments, but that the USPS has no way to pay for. In other words, they are $120 billion in the hole, to pay workers who have already done the work.
> that they pre-fund their retirement account fully within five years
The five-year requirement in the act is that every five years they have to figure out how much debt they have (retirement payments earned by workers) and compare it to how much they have set aside to make those payments. That's it - they just have to figure out how bad it is and issue report every five years.
What the postal service was doing, and is supposed to stop doing, is the kind of accounting that sent Enron executives to prison. If anyone but the postal service was hiding a $120 billion liability, it would be called "fraud".
What they were doing is saying to employees "work for us today, and we'll not only pay you today, we'll keep paying you after you retire, until you die." Someone can retire from USPS at the age of 56, so their retirement payments may be almost as much as their salary, or even more. Over the course of 30 years of retirement, the worker might be owed $840,000. So they had workers doing the work in say 1995, promised to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars "later", but never set aside any money to be able to make good on those promises.
They owe about $120 billion - for work already done, and hadn't set anything aside to pay it. Most "every other business in the country" funds your 401K or other retirement by sending their contribution to a third-party investment bank every time you get a paycheck. You work this month, they pay for it this month, including the retirement part. State retirement plans work the same way, at least where I'm from in Texas - whichever agency you work for, when they pay for this year's work, they also pay whatever retirement they'll owe for this year's work. They don't have you work today and say "we'll worry about how to pay for it 20 years from now".
In 2006 they were given fifteen years to get caught up on the retirement they owed. They haven't come come close, because they are losing money. Any "profit" has to go toward funding the retirement promises they've made, but the "profit" hasn't been nearly enough and the number of letters they carry has fallen 30% over the last ten years, so it's unlikely they'll ever be able to pay for the retirement they are promising today's employees. They'll need the taxpayers to bail them out.
Actually as a Brit, I'm speaking about the experience of much of Europe, where we have massive unfunded pension liabilities in the public sector. Do your civil service employees' pension costs form a fund or are they also a black hole?
In the1980s the US realized this was a big problem with the Civil Service Retirement Fund, so they switched to the "fully funded" Federal Employees Retirement System for people hired since 1984.
CSRF has a trust fund too, but it's not enough. One might think "1984 was a long time ago, it's okay now". But that was for people HIRED then. Some people were hired in 1980 and worked under CSRF until 2010. They'll be getting retirement payments in 2040.
Under both CSRF and FERS, each government *agency* pays in t
Fake News (Score:4, Interesting)
While they probably should, Trump feels this way because Jeff Bozo, who owns Amazon, also owns the NYT - or as Trump says "Fake News"...
Off to MetaMod (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone who apparently thinks it's cool for the USPS to subsidize Amazon shipping, and also can't even get straight what media companies Bezos owns, should not be modded up. I invite everyone to head over to MetaMod [slashdot.org], where you can rate the choices the moderators make and give these moderators a bit of a spanking.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Without subsidy the USPS will need to scale down massively, they can't compete in a free market environment.
Even then, they'll always run losses because the international treaties rapes every western postal service. If Trump wants to do something useful he should unilaterally get the US out of the treaty of Bern.
Re: (Score:5, Informative)
Without subsidy the USPS will need to scale down massively, they can't compete in a free market environment.
The USPS is not subsidized by the US government/taxpayers. Their rates are set by the government, but they operate entirely on the funds that they generate directly.
Even then, they'll always run losses because the international treaties rapes every western postal service. If Trump wants to do something useful he should unilaterally get the US out of the treaty of Bern.
The USPS is profitable. The reported shortfall in their budget was due to congress passing a new requirement (which only applied to the USPS) that they pre-fund their retirement account fully within five years. Meaning that the full retirement package for every postal service employee is fully paid. If every employee retired now (even if the
False and extra false (Score:3, Informative)
> that they pre-fund their retirement account fully within five years.
False. The five-year requirement is that every five years they have to calculate how far in the hole they are. (How much they owe to workers who have already worked, or are working on today, and whom they've promised decades of retirement pay to, without funding that promise.)
> If every employee retired now (even if they were just hired and thus are not eligible for retirement benefits...) the full amount of their retirement pension is covered.
Laughably false. They owe over $120 billion to workers who have already done the work and been promised retirement payments, but that the USPS has no way to pay for. In other words, they are $120 billion in the hole, to pay workers who have already done the work.
> that they pre-fund their retirement account fully within five years
The five-year requirement in the act is that every five years they have to figure out how much debt they have (retirement payments earned by workers) and compare it to how much they have set aside to make those payments. That's it - they just have to figure out how bad it is and issue report every five years.
What the postal service was doing, and is supposed to stop doing, is the kind of accounting that sent Enron executives to prison. If anyone but the postal service was hiding a $120 billion liability, it would be called "fraud".
What they were doing is saying to employees "work for us today, and we'll not only pay you today, we'll keep paying you after you retire, until you die." Someone can retire from USPS at the age of 56, so their retirement payments may be almost as much as their salary, or even more. Over the course of 30 years of retirement, the worker might be owed $840,000. So they had workers doing the work in say 1995, promised to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars "later", but never set aside any money to be able to make good on those promises.
They owe about $120 billion - for work already done, and hadn't set anything aside to pay it. Most "every other business in the country" funds your 401K or other retirement by sending their contribution to a third-party investment bank every time you get a paycheck. You work this month, they pay for it this month, including the retirement part. State retirement plans work the same way, at least where I'm from in Texas - whichever agency you work for, when they pay for this year's work, they also pay whatever retirement they'll owe for this year's work. They don't have you work today and say "we'll worry about how to pay for it 20 years from now".
In 2006 they were given fifteen years to get caught up on the retirement they owed. They haven't come come close, because they are losing money. Any "profit" has to go toward funding the retirement promises they've made, but the "profit" hasn't been nearly enough and the number of letters they carry has fallen 30% over the last ten years, so it's unlikely they'll ever be able to pay for the retirement they are promising today's employees. They'll need the taxpayers to bail them out.
https://www.cnbc.com/id/450184... [cnbc.com]
https://www.govtrack.us/congre... [govtrack.us]
However the rest of government works like that (Score:2)
Actually as a Brit, I'm speaking about the experience of much of Europe, where we have massive unfunded pension liabilities in the public sector. Do your civil service employees' pension costs form a fund or are they also a black hole?
US switched to fully funded in 1984. Sort of (Score:2)
In the1980s the US realized this was a big problem with the Civil Service Retirement Fund, so they switched to the "fully funded" Federal Employees Retirement System for people hired since 1984.
CSRF has a trust fund too, but it's not enough. One might think "1984 was a long time ago, it's okay now". But that was for people HIRED then. Some people were hired in 1980 and worked under CSRF until 2010. They'll be getting retirement payments in 2040.
Under both CSRF and FERS, each government *agency* pays in t
Thanks - very helpful (Score:2)
n/t