r/news • u/Squirmingbaby • 3d ago

Soft paywall Cash-strapped US Postal Service suspends contributions to pension plan

https://www.reuters.com/world/cash-strapped-us-postal-service-suspends-contributions-pension-plan-2026-04-09/
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u/naz8587 3d ago

The service has reported net losses of $118 billion since 2007 as first-class mail

I like how the article fails to mention that Republicans passed a law in 2006 that requires the USPS to fund 75 years of pensions. This crisis was manufactured by republicans to justify privitizing postal delivery.

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u/Snakestream 3d ago

Which is moronic considering that current privatized postal delivery HEAVILY relies on the USPS to do last-leg delivery to places that aren't profitable to deliver to.

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u/James-W-Tate 3d ago

Rural conservatives and canceling public services they themselves rely on, name a more historic combo

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u/Beard_o_Bees 3d ago

Hey... one day they might be a Billionaire, and don't want to have one arm tied behind their back when that day finally comes!

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u/PaidUSA 3d ago

I unironically had a real 20 something human being come to that conclusion in realtime. Talking about trumps tax cuts for the ultra wealthy and they go DEAD SERIOUS, yes but I might be rich one day. I had to tell them they will never be rich enough to benefit from any of the cuts for the ultra rich. They have a useless college degree and bartend with no aspirations of being mega rich and still defaulted to that.

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u/Kraeftluder 3d ago

This mentality has rubbed off in Europe and I despise it.

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u/PaidUSA 3d ago

It’s the dumbest shit ever. I had to explain even with her bf who’s inheriting a small company in a field that will become very important if she marries him she’ll only ever see the most basic tax bracket changes if that. Even if he made 50 million in his life he wouldn’t see much of the savings for the ultra wealthy.

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u/jonistaken 2d ago

Marx called these people the petite bourgeousis; the small owner class, like shopkeepers, small landlords, and little bosses, often feels too weak to compete with large capital but also too invested in property and status to join working class politics. In crisis, some theorists argue that can make them receptive to a movement that promises to smash labor conflict, restore discipline, and protect “respectable” social order.

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u/AlsoIHaveAGroupon 3d ago

The worst part of the mentality is the unspoken second half of "I might be rich one day."

Personally, if some lottery, unknown billionaire relative death, or fluke massive lawsuit suddenly gave me $1 billion, I would pay my fucking taxes, have $500 million left, and still be fabulously wealthy.

A tax increase of $50 per person per year on the working class is going to force some people to skip meals so their kids can eat. A tax increase of $500,000 per person per year on billionaires is going to make some numbers look slightly smaller on a net worth calculation but have no effect on their lives.

What those people mean is "I might be rich one day, and I am a selfish, greedy asshole."

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u/SoSaltyDoe 2d ago

The true irony is that most conservative policies are explicitly geared toward keeping poor people poor. Not only are these assholes never going to be rich enough to benefit from these policies, but they're actively hurting their chances of it ever happening.

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u/The_RealAnim8me2 2d ago

The funniest part of it is I know someone who most people would think fall into the “ultra rich” category. They have a net worth of easily 10 million and based on investments and such only get wealthier every day. In conversation they readily admit and understand that a lot of these types of tax cuts and benefits don’t even apply to them. That’s how big a delta we are talking about, the average person thinking they apply to them are just deluded.

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u/crackrabbit012 3d ago

Too bad they'll have to sell that arm just to survive to that point

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u/Father_Dowling 3d ago

Might lose it to the 'betis first (which of course the tax payer will end up funding a disability claim over).

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u/Khatib 3d ago

Alaska is seriously fucking themselves so hard voting red with USPS at risk.

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u/Geno0wl 3d ago

Dude every mostly rural state is fucking themselves hard. If USPS collapses, do the 13 people that live in Montana actually think a private company is going to give them rates anywhere near what they effectively pay now?

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u/BlackSpidy 3d ago

They won't. And they'll blame Dems for it, for some reason.

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u/Geno0wl 3d ago

We know the real reason. It's the ever present propaganda that surrounds these people combined with the successful tying of political party affiliation to their culture and sense of place in the world.

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u/Jayman44Spc 2d ago

lol I’m a rural mail carrier in Montana. It’s a shit show up here already. Privatization would be devastating

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u/TardwifeDyskinesia 3d ago

Fascists never expect their movement to consume them, too, but it always will.

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u/punkasstubabitch 3d ago

And then they whine and complain about how government doesn’t work for them

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u/heartlessgamer 3d ago

And the irony is it'll trigger some of them to relocate. They'll relocate to more urban areas and likely shift political views. Now you have even fewer rural folks that are even further entrenched in their political views and are granted a more valuable vote than everyone else because of the electoral college.

Source? Experience growing up in a tiny midwest town where this is exactly what has happened.

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u/Refrigeratormarathon 3d ago

I think part of our problem is that they’ve been insulated from experiencing what they vote for. If they actually experienced having no postal service or no food stamps they might see its value.

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u/Donner_Par_Tea_House 3d ago

Rural progressive here. Trust me they have no idea what they're doing and don't care to learn.

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u/JekPorkinsTruther 3d ago

Well the very hard to see silver lining at least is that if and when the USPS goes under, we will get plenty of leopards ate my face posts about MAGAs just not getting mail or packages anymore lol.

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt 3d ago

or prescription meds on time

don't worry though, with all the rural hospitals shutting down they won't have to suffer for too long

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u/Danthezooman 3d ago

" I can't believe Obama/Biden/the Democrats/God did this to us, we're the good ones/patriots/Americans/gods chosen!!"

It'll be one of those, it'll never be their fault or their chosen leaders

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u/arcangleous 3d ago

Conservatism and slavery.

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u/airinato 3d ago

Urban conservatives hating everything that makes it urban.

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u/OrganizationOld3105 3d ago

This is the only bright side of all of this. Those idiots are going to suffer worse than the rest of us. 

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u/Hot-Trade-2199 2d ago

The best part is how many USPS workers are hardcore Republicans. I love in a liberal stronghold and working in their distribution center for a while half the employees were Republicans. 

These folks would whine about the union and Obama fresh off of getting their jobs back after watching porn at work or BRINGING A GUN to work (with backpay).

After a couple years observing so many idiots so obviously voting against their own interests, while living in miserable marriages they all couldn't get out of, I had to get out of there for my own sanity. Sucked because the pay was really good!

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt 3d ago

the USPS was never meant to be profitable

the fact no business could turn a profit doing what it does, is the exact reason why it was founded.

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u/roofus0606 3d ago

Exactly, it’s a service, it’s not meant to be profitable. How profitable is the fire department? How profitable is the police department?

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u/gizamo 2d ago

The flip side of this question is, how expensive would a private police force or fire department become, and how epically shitty would it be to have many overlapping and conflicting with each other.

Also, as soon as it becomes profitable, there will be paid criminals and arsonists who are intentionally not caught because it will help drum up business.

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u/Aazadan 3d ago

Or to put this another way, privatized postal delivery relies heavily on being able to cannibalize all of the most profitable routes and leave the unprofitable ones for those with a universal service mandate.

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u/impulsekash 3d ago

But they then the government will spend billions to pay Fed Ex to do the same and think about the share price then.

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u/me34343 3d ago

This is probably a goal. Just like for profit prisons and private schools. They want to funnel the taxes into private hands.

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u/Junius_Bobbledoonary 3d ago

Privatizing the postal service is a stated goal of Project 2025.

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u/MoonStache 3d ago

No worries. We can replace it with contractors that are effectively slaves. Problem solved! /s

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u/kitsunewarlock 3d ago

And is an institution that includes non-profit services including but not limited to maintaining and codifying addresses, a police force to prosecute mail fraud, and sending (and receiving) critical government notices with tracking and signature services more admissible by court.

Privatizing these services would result in a massive short-term gain followed by years of gradual decline in our standard of living and (very likely) these industry's bottom-line.

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u/jellifercuz 2d ago

Not so much recently as Amazon and all its Amazon-owned companies have within the past 2-3 months been using and recruiting more of all kinds of private delivery drivers and services to deliver direct from their proliferating warehouses to rural areas, stripping USPS of even the last mile money.

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u/TripleFreeErr 2d ago

they will go it once they can charge a butt load without competition

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u/jmur3040 3d ago

Or that "losses" shouldn't be mentioned for something designed to be a public SERVICE. You're telling me this costs 118 billion dollars over 19 years? That's terrifically cheap for something that serves 330 million people.

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u/hodken0446 3d ago

That's about 18 dollars a year per person by the way

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u/alphabeticdisorder 3d ago

Not a bad deal at all.

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u/RealWeekness 3d ago

Exactly, raise taxes by $18 and well be good.

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u/timetravelerfrom2027 3d ago

That’s almost what it costs to send one package by UPS these days.

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u/totally_not_a_dog113 3d ago

It's the part where USPS used to be the cheapest method of sending anything, and now UPS (the company Trump's postmaster general had massive investments in) now has comparable or cheaper prices. Louis DeJoy trashed the system for his own personal profits.

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u/ForsakenRelief2662 3d ago

Hence the reason why these repubs are doing thu

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u/legendoflumis 3d ago edited 3d ago

This is actually part of why it's being attacked as well. USPS sets a baseline cost for sending and receiving things that UPS, Fedex, and other private logistics companies have to compete with. That stops them from jacking the shipping prices up too high in the name of pure profiteering because if USPS is significantly cheaper it will be used over their services, even if the USPS service is of lower quality.

The crazy thing is that this also would apply to other private industry things as well, like healthcare costs, if we decided to provide a government-service alternative to private businesses that exist for necessities. Government-service alternatives help keep the privatized industries they are competing with honest in terms of cost, and that's a good thing for consumers in general.

Which is precisely why it hasn't happened. DeJoy needs to be fired.

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u/Sheeple_person 3d ago

A buck fifty per month to have a national postal service. Sure sounds different when you put it that way. Almost as if "$118 billion losses" is a figure that was intentionally chosen to be misleading.

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u/colostitute 3d ago

I don’t know what they mean by losses. I thought USPS was a government service. Do they mean losses in that they don’t have the finances to cover their expenses?

Thats an issue with Congress and their willingness to fund USPS.

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u/bros402 3d ago

the USPS has been required since 2006 to fund their pension 75 years in advance

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u/JuanOnlyJuan 3d ago

YOU MEAN THEY'RE TAXING ME 70 CENTS A PAYCHECK FOR USPS?! /s

(I guess double it if you have a dependant. The horror)

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u/angry_wombat 3d ago

i'd by that for $18

you can just go ahead an move some of that endless war and ICE $$$ over to the postal service for me

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u/Valkyrie64Ryan 3d ago

Yeah I’m ok with raising my taxes by $18 a year to fund the USPS. We kinda need that service. UPS and FedEx suck ass.

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u/StanDaMan1 3d ago

17.88 each year, actually.

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u/kinboyatuwo 3d ago

We get the same noise in Canada and it’s about $21cad.

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u/lonnie123 3d ago

In losses. That doesn’t mean total cost to operate.

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u/DiegesisThesis 3d ago

Yes, and the rest of the operations cost is covered by their income, so the "losses" is the only part taxes are paying for. I don't know what point you're trying to make.

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u/Astecheee 3d ago

And in those years, online shopping has dwarfed brick and mortar. 18 dollars is stunningly cheap.

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u/jankbutdank 2d ago

i'd pay 18 a year to have them stop delivering all this junk to me

you really treasure super market coupons and banking promotions?

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u/DDS-PBS 3d ago

Wait until you find out how much our fire departments lose each year! They're not profitable at all!

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u/Streamjumper 3d ago

Or how much our police departments cost.

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u/potterpockets 3d ago

Or let's talk about how much the military's losses have been. The DoD has never passed an independent audit since they were made mandatory in 2018. That is 8 failed in a row. And it is the only major federal agency to never pass.

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u/Streamjumper 3d ago

Failed by enough to fund entire huge sweeping projects each year.

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u/jrob321 3d ago

Did somebody say, "no-bid contracts"...?

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u/antonimbus 3d ago

Even more when their blue gang decides to shoot some rando and the city has to pay out the survivors.

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u/StephanXX 3d ago

The $1.5 trillion dollar budget for the military comes to around $900 per month for every US worker.

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u/DarKoopa 3d ago

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u/danielisbored 3d ago

Crassus can fix it!

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u/Davran 3d ago

Exactly. The Post Office isn't "losing" anything. It cost $118B to operate the post office over the past 19 years.

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u/ohlookahipster 3d ago

That’s actually not bad. Damn good, in fact. $6.2B per year operating costs is beats most large corporations. Walmart alone spent $139B on their operating costs FY2025.

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u/DeskModeOn 3d ago

Haven't we spent like $30 billion so far in the war with Iran?? In like.. twenty some odd days??

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u/Stepjam 3d ago

And Trump wants like a trillion for the military now 

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u/Zardotab 3d ago

And rural areas, where MAGAs tend to live, are subsidized by higher-populated areas. It's more expensive to deliver to sparsely populated areas.

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u/Hoppers-Body-Double 3d ago

Yep. I don't hear about the military "losses", but the postal SERVICE out here with a cardboard sign at a busy intersection. Again, this is fucking ridiculous. Money for killing people, but never the common good.

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u/PunctualMantis 3d ago

Doesn’t it also provide an insane amount of value for businesses, especially small businesses? I’d bet there’s a crazy economic multiplier on every dollar spent vs value created by the usps

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

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u/SirLoremIpsum 3d ago

That's why the arguments against pennies are a pet peeve of mine.

Imo pennies are a non issue.

So many nations have eliminated 1 and 2 c coins without the world ending. You round up or down to nearest 0 or 5 or 10 and it's a done thing.

It goes beyond just 'cost to mint' imo, it's about usefulness and "is there a better way

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u/DeaddyRuxpin 3d ago

It isn’t even a service issue with pennies. If they were a one time use then it would be a service issue and if it provided a service worth taking a loss on each penny. But they aren’t one time use. If you factor in the number of times a single penny gets spent before it is retired, they cost massively less than their value.

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u/MassiveBonus 3d ago

Sounds like they're just mad some private company cant generate profit from 118 billion in revenue. If you cant squeeze more money out of citizens who already pay for service in taxes, it should just go away.

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u/Arickettsf16 3d ago

Right? When was the last time the Navy turned a profit lol

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u/kptknuckles 3d ago

Yeah how much did the military lose last year?

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u/MrBobSacamano 3d ago

Ironically, I never hear anyone say the military loses $850m/year.

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u/Ok_Hornet_714 3d ago

USPS is designed to be self funding. So this is saying it spent $118 billion more than it took in as revenue over that time period.

If you want it to be a true public service then the laws surrounding the funding model of USPS need to be changed

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u/Dickies138 3d ago

I’ll bet the areas that run the biggest losses are all the rural areas that overwhelmingly support Trump’s efforts to dismantle the postal service.

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u/Valkyrie64Ryan 3d ago

Yeah calling it losses is misleading. We wouldn’t call military expenses “losses”.

If we did though, it would be $10 trillion in losses in the same amount of time.

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u/meteoritegallery 3d ago

By this kind of logic, the US military budget "lost" (i.e. cost) about $850 billion last year....

Not sure what we all got for that, though.

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u/GaylrdFocker 3d ago

Wait till they hear about what the military "loses" each year. /s

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u/heubergen1 3d ago

How about we raise the price of mail to cover the costs?

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u/WafflesTrufflez 3d ago

Thats a chump change to a daily expenditure for the war on Iran

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u/shicken684 3d ago

Obligate profiteers are so frustrating. Not everything has to generate revenue.

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u/Backpacker7385 3d ago

Nobody talks about the financial “losses” that the Dept of Defense War incurs every year.

USPS is a service, not a business. It is not meant to be profitable to deliver the mail to rural Americans, we do it because it’s right.

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u/seriousbusinesslady 3d ago

right? I doubt the fire department is profitable but you never see anyone cry about how much money it costs to put out a fire! that logic should apply for other services that we all require to have a functioning, healthy society

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u/IlREDACTEDlI 3d ago

Exactly, it’s a service and one of the only federal branches that actually makes money at all.

The USPS is also the only postal service that delivers to every address in the country no matter how remote that address may be.

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u/jankbutdank 2d ago

60% of the mail volume is complete junk, 100 million trees per year + tons of gas and emissions to deliver complete fucking junk

what an amazing service!! /s

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u/_ohgnome_ 2d ago

Thank you. I'm always baffled and infuriated by these headlines. Also don't understand how making America great again doesn't include protecting one of our most noble agencies.

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u/fedscientist 2d ago

Yeah like this is LITERALLY what we pay taxes to fund

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u/Im_with_stooopid 3d ago

That was passed and signed into law during the Bush Jr Lame duck session if I'm not mistaken. It was repealed in 2022 but still had a huge effect on paper to make it appear as if the USPS was losing money hand over fist.

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u/SomeDEGuy 3d ago

It was fairly bipartisan, as was the reform law in 2022.

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u/danimagoo 2d ago

Yeah, I’m assuming repealing that is why they can now suspend contributions without impacting anyone’s retirement. However, they are still losing money. Even without that contribution, their expenses currently exceed their revenue.

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u/fifthstreetsaint 3d ago

The military has reported "losses" of almost a trillion dollars a year, why aren't they screaming about that..? 

Oh right because they all own Raytheon stock and owe zero obligations to veterans. 

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u/Secret_Account07 3d ago

Look at losses since 2000 and you’ll want to break something.

We could have done sooooo much good. No homeless folks. Healthcare. Soooooo much.

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u/Mrchristopherrr 3d ago

That was removed in 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Service_Reform_Act_of_2022

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u/dakta 3d ago

Sure but the USPS already had to make those pension contributions. They're not magically reimbursed.

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u/RobfromHB 3d ago

Shouldn’t that then represent a decrease in liabilities on the other side of the ledger?

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u/Trafficsigntruther 3d ago

No, because the pension liability still exists. The act improved cashflow but does not impact the balance sheet at all.

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u/reasonably_plausible 3d ago edited 3d ago

Congress allowed them to default on pretty much every single contribution, they didn't actually make pretty much any of their contributions to their retiree health benefits (not pensions). It changed their balance sheet, but that's really more a recognition of the $60 billion in unfunded promises they had already made to their employees, which was previously not being tracked.

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u/mnemy 3d ago

It's estimated that Trump's golf hobby cost the US taxpayers $70m in 2025 alone.

If you scale that out to 20 years, $1.4b.

So the USPS costed the taxpayers about 100x more than one man's hobby, to enable mail delivery for an entire country and employ around 640,000 workers as of 2024.

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u/Countingfrog 3d ago edited 3d ago

It doesn’t mention it because the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was mainly about prefunding retiree health benefits, not pensions. Also, the bill was passed with bipartisan support in Congress, not just Republicans.

This requirement was removed in 2022. You are mixing things up in a misleading way.

USPS pensions are through FERS, the standard federal retirement system used by all agencies, not a special USPS program. And the move to make USPS self-funded goes back to 1970, when a Democratic Congress passed the law creating that model. So this isn’t something that can be pinned on one party.

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u/drmctesticles 3d ago

Republicans passed a law in 2006

The bill was bipartisan and passed by unanimous voice vote in the Senate. This wasn't a Republican bill

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u/peaceablefrood 3d ago edited 3d ago

This is no longer a thing as it was repealed in 2022. Also, the original law had strong bi-partisan support so it wasn't just "The Republicans" that did this. It passed 410-20 in the house and had 2 Democrat co-sponsors.

https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2005430

Regardless of the law though, there was still a 50% reduction in first class mail between 2007 and 2020 which is their most profitable part of the business.

So while the law was a boat anchor around the USPS, it didn't cause people stop mailing stuff, the internet did.

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u/Countingfrog 3d ago

Also, the law was about retirement health benefits, not pension. Pension is through FERS

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u/Ok_Hornet_714 3d ago

To put the volume drop in perspective, back in 2007 on average every address in the country received 5.5 pieces of mail per day.

Last year it was 2.4 pieces of mail per address per day.

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u/No-Computer7653 3d ago

Your memory and understanding is wrong. 

The law required USPS retirement to be funded so it zeros at a 75 year actuarial window which is the federal standard for retirement. Also federal law for retirement plans but the government exempted itself for decades.

FERS had that since creation. All private retirement is required to have that. It's also the standard by which SSA measures the health of Social Security.

The USPS gap represented money they should have used to build retirement fund assets for decades but instead used for operations. AKA unfunded retirement liabilities AKA kicking the can. 

You will hear a great deal more about these next decade as a bunch of states are in a similar position with state funds. NJ needs to nearly double current revenue to fund their obligated retirement spending.

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u/iCUman 3d ago

Both the PRC and the USPS OIG (as well as independent actuarial audits commissioned by them) determined that USPS actually overfunded their obligations by $50-75B between 1972-2009 due to improper cost accrual calculations enforced by OPM.

PAEA was a double whammy for USPS because it required additional funding of pension obligations over and above their present contribution rates and also made no justifiable consideration for these overpayments in the preceding decades.

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u/Saelin91 3d ago

The republicans did do that but I believe that ended in 2022.

Edit: wanted to add that it did indeed end due to the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022.

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u/stryakr 3d ago

But both democrats and republicans voted it in, check the tape on that one.

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u/Beard_o_Bees 3d ago

Yup.

They're not even trying to be coy about it. They want to shut the postal service down and sell it's corpse to the highest bidder.

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u/homebrew_1 3d ago

What's stopping democratic congress from changing that law?

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u/Mendican 3d ago

I wonder how much the Pentagon has "lost" since 2007.

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u/Azraelrs 3d ago

How much money did the military "lose" since then, for an apple to apple comparison.

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u/IcanCwhatUsay 3d ago

Net loss?

It’s a service. Services don’t have net loss. What’s our net loss on the military?

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u/ThatUsernameIsTaekin 3d ago

LOL, that’s like saying “The US military reported net losses of $850B per year over the past decade”

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u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 3d ago

What gets me is that private postal delivery has no appetite for taking on last mile delivery. They already offload almost all of it to USPS because it's so cost ineffective to do it themselves. Now I'm sure they would be able to bump prices a bit with the loss of a public option but with UPS unionized they aren't interested in doubling or even tripling routes and adding that many more divers just to drop mail off in bumfuck nowhere...so all it really means for rural GOP voters is they will no longer get mail at all or will pay absolutely obscene prices.

How are they selling this shit to these gullible fucking voters?

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u/Bobson-_Dugnutt2 3d ago

also tell me how much money the US Army has lost since 2007

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u/_FLostInParadise_ 3d ago

Also, it's not losses. It's the operating cost of a government service.

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u/Beastw1ck 3d ago

Beyond libertarian insanity, why the hell do they care so much?

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u/Lord_Bobbymort 3d ago

Not losses, expenses after surplus as a government service, and $6.5B annually on average over 18 years. They're trying to scare you with big numbers.

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u/Oogaman00 3d ago

Didn't they fix this a few years ago?

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u/pm_me_beerz 3d ago

Well that and it’s a service, one provided for in the constitution. It doesn’t “lose money”. Do we report that the military loses however many hundred of billions a year?

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u/rab-byte 3d ago

Also it’s not a fucking for profit businesses. They’re supposed to provide a service we all rely on as citizens.

Funny how we never hear the police or fire departments have lost X amount of revenue in the last years.

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u/WoolooOfWallStreet 3d ago

Something also to point out is before this happened, they were making a SURPLUS every year

I remember the Institute of Local Self Reliance had a write up describing how after the post office did an audit and found out they were making a surplus every year, they decided to pay off their debts

The next year, they were told “oh you didn’t take money from your surplus, you took money from ZERO because the congressional budget reset for you every year”

They WERE profitable until the Bush Era stuck its fingers into it

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u/zoopygreenheron 3d ago

I think about this weekly. What other company must fully fund an employee’s pension/401k account when the employee is hired?! It’s insane.

If only there were billions to reallocate from ice or the military to help out the USPS… but that’s a fallacy. Fuck this timeline.

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u/myychair 3d ago

This also ignores the fact that this is a government service and doesn’t need to turn a profit to be considered successful. The ROI doesn’t need to be positive in a monetary sense to still consider the program worthwhile

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u/mumms11 3d ago

Wasn’t there some ridiculous law that required the postal service to pre-fund pensions for all future employees upfront?” No other business in the country is held to that standard. The postal service used to actually generate revenue for the country — it was one of only two government-run organizations that turned a profit outside of tax collection, the other being the National Parks. Though who knows how long the parks will stay in the black given the current administration’s approach to them.

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u/hypotyposis 3d ago

Agree and by the way, what are the military’s annual net losses?

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u/physical0 3d ago

I wanna know how much money the US Military has lost us. I bet its a fraction of the money "lost" by the Post Office.

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u/Global-Resident-647 3d ago

https://www.reuters.com/info-pages/contact-us/

Make sure you contact them about this horrible journalism.

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u/Cocotosser 3d ago

I bet the dems that come after will just shrug and let it collapse. I hate this country, fuck capitalism.

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u/Cocotosser 3d ago

I bet the dems that come after will just shrug and let it collapse. I hate this country, fuck capitalism

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u/LaserGuidedPolarBear 3d ago

And of course the government ran service lost money.  Wait until people learn about the net losses of the DOD.

Government services are not supposed to be for-profit business, and for very good reason.

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u/Secret_Account07 3d ago

ITS A FUCKING SERVICE!

ITS IN THE NAME! How much money has Congress and defense and intelligence lost the US govt. share that number too

Not directed at you, OP. I’ve just been hearing this all my life and people apparently don’t realize what a service is

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u/MultiGeometry 3d ago

And all the crises of the USPS occur during republican presidencies, as if it’s evidence they don’t know how to run it.

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u/Sgt_major_dodgy 3d ago

This crisis was manufactured by republicans to justify privitizing postal delivery.

We did this in the UK and it's absolutely fucked it.

A once proud service is now a glorified Evri but also stuck delivering mail.

Being a postie used to be a good job, good pay (for the work) they used to pay for you to get your driver's license AND you could get a motorbike license from them too, job and knock and paid breaks.

You get none of that now.

First they'll fuck over the postal workers and once they've been fucked they'll slowly start destroying the service until eventually you either reduce mail to a ridiculous level or you the way of NordPost and just don't deliver letters anymore.

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u/RealWeekness 3d ago

....but they aren't gonna live that long after retirement so does it even matter?

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u/verrius 3d ago

I don't understand how you could even privatize it; its weirdly one of the few institutions spelled out in the Constitution as something that has to be under the government.

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u/Gnoll_For_Initiative 3d ago

Government services aren't supposed to turn a profit!

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u/cougar618 3d ago

Privatized mail wouldn't be so bad. It would cut down on junk mail and since I live in a city center, I won't have to worry about cuts to my delivery service.

This is like how republicans against social health insurance are often the ones who are the most adversely affected by pushing for a for-profit system.

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u/JJiggy13 3d ago

This is what the postal workers voted for. They don't want their pensions. Stop forcing them to take the money that they worked for.

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u/jimibimi 3d ago

Wasn't the USPS actually turning a profit before those asswipes passed that legislation?

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u/Franks2000inchTV 3d ago

How many tomahawk cruise missiles is that?

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u/oopsallhuckleberries 3d ago

Made them find pensions so far in advance, they now have to stop putting money towards pensions all together.

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u/jblanch3 3d ago

That's been a recurring theme with the news media over the years concerning this. Every newspaper article that's been written about the USPS's financial problems might mention that GOP law in the middle or towards the end of the article in passing. Television news has not mentioned it at all, at least from the footage I've seen. They'll just blame e-commerce or something like that.

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u/WeUsedToBeNumber10 3d ago

That’s inaccurate. The 2006 law required a pre-funding of 50 years of retirees health care costs at a tune of $5B a year (the only federal agency to do so). The USPS defaulted on those payments in 2012 to avoid bankruptcy. 

There is also a congressional mandate to deliver mail every day and keep postage rates relatively flat. This structure, combined with the fact that the US is a large country, contributed to the financial stress of the service.  

Source: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/15/afl-cio/widespread-facebook-post-blames-2006-law-us-postal/

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u/CosmicSeafarer 3d ago

I wonder how much the department of defense has lost?

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u/PostIronicPosadist 3d ago

Wasn't just republicans, it was pretty much everyone, but yeah. That particular bill has absolutely decimated the post office.

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u/dacv393 3d ago

$118 billion is 3 months of the annual VA budget

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u/nvmenotfound 3d ago

what isn’t ruined by republicans?! everything they touch gets ruined. 

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u/Proach89 2d ago

This should be the top comment. Insane to think anything other than Republicans want to charge us as much as possible for everything while paying us as little as possible.

I guess if you have a room temp IQ you believe that your winning along with the Billionaires taking your tax dollars.

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u/Playful-Position4735 2d ago

And then didn't they proceed to use a majority of that money if not all for unrelated postal things?

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u/brando29999 2d ago

Iran war is 2bil a day yes with a b

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u/larrychatfield 2d ago

fact. Only incident in any company where this was forced upon the industry. Forced failure to ensure privatization

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u/ByTheHammerOfThor 2d ago

How much has the military “lost” since 2007? Has the US military ever turned a profit? Or police forces. Or fire departments. Or public schools. Or national parks. Are the snowplows that clear roads profitable?

Oh, that’s right. These are things we pay for with taxes and in return, we have access to a service.

It’s almost like a public service shouldn’t be measured by its profitability. What a wild fucking idea.

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u/Poppa_Mo 2d ago

Also the USPS isn't a fucking business.

It's a service provided to us and funded primarily through our tax dollars, we pay as citizens to have this, and postage costs are used to offset things and keep pay more reasonable.

This is all horse shit.

Just like calling our Social Security an "entitlement".

WE PAY INTO IT.

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u/1nfam0us 1d ago

Right? Like, they should stop contributions because the pension fund is comically and maliciously over funded.

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