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Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

People still scream bloody murder about the Post Office being required to fund its pensions and avoid these catastrophes.

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Yep!

Though, to be fair it's complicated. Requiring them to fully fund their pension obligations rather than use pay-go accounting is absolutely fair. Not only fair, it should be entirely uncontroversial. And I think it would be relatively uncontroversial, partly because the USPS is slowly making ground. IIRC they're past 70% funding and it's steadily improving.

Setting aside the partisan politicking that has hijacked the debate, IIRC the real bone of contention are the healthcare liabilities. Congress won't allow the USPS to cut retiree healthcare benefits even though the union contracts permit this. Healthcare inflation grew substantially larger than expected. Though this wasn't entirely unforeseen--it's why the contract permits cutting benefits. This is what's actually bankrupting the USPS. Healthcare benefits are only funded to something like 30%, and the USPS simply can't gain any ground because of healthcare inflation.

The best fix for this is Single Payer - healthcare is a COST, only disasters and horrid genetic "luck" are things that can be bet against across populations.

The single payer arguement will win out. It’ll take the end of the era where geezer baby boomers were controlling government to get it done.

No the screaming was about politicians who required the Post Office to fund it's pensions, then went and used that fact to claim the Post Office is mismanaged and we should outsource that basic function.

I think one side of the aisle is definitely more to blame than the other for this manufactured controversy, but to be fair the Democrats also intentionally conflate the pension and healthcare liabilities, for somewhat similar reasons as the Republicans. Democrats have put themselves in the position of implicitly defending pay-go funding for pensions because they don't want to spook public sector unions at the state level where pay-go is the norm. (At the federal level the USPS was the outlier for using pay-go, rather than fully funding liabilities.)

It's indefensible policy wise. The USPS is capable of fully funding the pension liabilities and are making solid progress. It's the healthcare liabilities which are bankrupting them, but Congress has prohibited them from cutting retiree healthcare benefits even though the USPS deliberately (and smartly) negotiated for that flexibility in the union contracts.

But the fact that these liabilities weren't already funded is proof that it was mismanaged.

The funding part is fixed now but the fact that it wasn't funded already is a problem.

Before the USPS was treated as the civil service, with unfounded liabilities being paid out of current taxation, like social security. Now they want the USPS to act like a private company and fund its own liabilities. If you change the rules you should not expect an organisation that was fine under the old rules to be fine under the new ones, especially immediately.

Alternatively, one could argue that these other unfounded liabilities, such as social security, are also poorly run because of them being unfunded.

I'm really struggling to see the need for a government postal service any longer. Compared to 20 years ago, 95% of what I would get in the mail is now delivered electronically. All my bills are paid electronically. I haven't sent a letter via post in recent memory. What I do get delivered by the postal service is frequently mis-delivered. I get first-class mail addresed to my neighbors at least a couple of times a month. Who knows how much of my mail simply disappears? The rest of my mail is junk: adverts and flyers that go straight into the trash, unread.

Package delivery by USPS is cheap and reliable, e.g. for 3rd-party online sellers.

Cheap yes, reliable no. Last time I ordered from Amazon I had to go looking for it in my neighbor's mailboxes (technically illegal for me to do that, but Amazon told me it had been delivered and yet it was not in my mailbox).

Found it two houses down from mine.

Has been reliable in large city, for hundreds of package deliveries, usually faster than UPS.

I've had horror stories no matter WHAT delivery service makes an attempt. Even those automated lockers are seriously annoying (mostly because there aren't enough of them).

I'm actually slightly amazed that the local mall doesn't talk to the various delivery companies and just "give" them an unused store front to setup an automated box for every company inside of it. I imagine the increase in traffic TO the mall would more than make up for the loss of otherwise unused dead space.

Interesting idea, but I don't think it would need to be an entire storefront. I've been to plenty of malls with entranceways that are lined with long, blank, feature-free walls. Lots of lockers could be in those places.

FedEx did the same thing with $5,000 of Apple gear for me.

In my area, USPS is by far the best carrier for parcels, especially for residential delivery.

Having a reasonably well run, national organization with an obligation to serve every home and business is a wonderful thing.

FedEx did it with 15,000$ worth of apple gear for me.

Seriously, what driver would think it's appropriate to leave a bunch of imac pro boxes with a (thankfully in my case good natured) neighbour?

It's a thin justification, but the IRS still sends a lot of correspondence via USPS that they're not allowed to send in other ways. And taxes can still be received at the post office up until the filing deadline. The IRS has come a long ways with eFile, but it's still not universal. So the USPS needs to exist, if only to support the government's current revenue collection mechanisms.

Only until the Legislature or Executive chooses to change those arbitrary rules. They could choose a new delivery partner (or multiple, subject to open access criteria they designate)

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