Yves here. We’re giving the latest USPS horrorshow, that of Postmaster General DeJoy actively trying to push the Postal Service into a death spiral by raising prices and degrading service, extra attention in the hope that citizens will call or e-mail their Congresscritter to demand their old Postal Service back.
DeJoy didn’t mention at all the single most important driver of the Postal Service’s annual deficit: the onerous requirement, enacted in 2006, that the service pre-fund its retiree healthcare costs, a mandate not imposed on any other government agency or private corporation.
According to the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, the mandate costs the USPS more than $4 billion a year. Without this burden, the institute says, “the Post Office would have reported operating profits in each of the last six years.” Instead, “This extraordinary mandate created a financial ‘crisis’ that has been used to justify harmful service cuts and even calls for postal privatization.”