1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

He has but one ball, and it's made of brass

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by TigerVols, Oct 1, 2014.

  1. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    You're acting like a dipshit again. This isn't an opinion. I am either right or I am wrong.

    No, it isn't only Ragu. It's the difference between someone who isn't an unthinking moron and questioned the notion that a congressional act made the USPS insolvent by forcing it to pay made up pension obligations for people that don't exist. ... and someone who wants to believe something so bad, that whatever misinformation (created intentionally by someone with an agenda regarding the USPS) they read HAS to be true.

    For what it is worth, it took me about a second and a half on Google just now to find this. It basically explains it the same way I tried to, including the correspondence between Darrell Issa and the Congressional Research Service, which it correctly explained that the 75 years is an accounting issue and has nothing to do with what the USPS was required to fund (despite the misinformation campaign someone created):

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432


     
  2. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    I know when I look for agenda-free analysis, two places I always go are CNBC and Darrell Issa.
     
  3. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    You can enlist the easter bunny to do "analysis" for you. The PAEA isn't ambiguous. It's not whatever your "analysis" wants it to be.

    The act has dozens of SPECIFIC provisions related to the USPS -- however you personally feel about any of those provisions, it isn't an ambiguous thing, at least with regard to those very specific funding requirements.

    There is a section related to the retiree health care obligations, and it spreads out yearly payments of $5.4 billion to $5.8 billion over 10 years (as an aside, the USPS defaulted on those payments in 2011) to prefund accrued benefits for former and current employees -- those payments are roughly in line with the approximately $50 billion in unfunded retiree health liabilities the USPS had at the time -- the act also has provisions for how to treat any excesses.

    If there were additional funding requirements that I am missing, by all means point me to them, including the part of the act that established a funding requirement for employees who don't exist yet (and will be retiring 75 years from now).
     
  4. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    The law required the Postal Service to pay 75 years' worth of costs in 10 years. That is indisputable. Although the idea that it's for a not-yet-born employee is theoretical, it does exist. From your own CNBC link:

    But for accounting purposes they must estimate the future liability over a 75 year period (according to OPM financial accounting guidelines). In this case, they would make some assumptions about new entrants into the workforce and addresses your second question.

    Theoretically, these new entrants could include someone who is not born yet. While they have to account for these future liabilities on their financial statements they do not have to fund them if they are not related to their current or former workforce."


    That appears to me to be an admission that the matter is not theoretical. But it's probably more talking point than actual concern. However, in the least, we can agree that we are talking about a 75-year time frame based on life expectancies and actuarial standards.

    So, to recap:

    1) The USPS would be making money but for these new pension obligations.

    2) No other government entity is required to fulfill these pension obligations.

    Oh, and I will add:

    3) A reform bill in 2012, with healthy bipartisan support and 229 co-sponsors (53 percent of the house), was derailed in committee. By Darrell Issa.

    It's political crap disguised as the typical doomsday predictions from Ayn Rand's harem. Do you ever get angry that the world hasn't formed to your predictions and we aren't all eating beans out of a can in the dark because of our collective irresponsibility?
     
  5. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Not only disputable, but just plain wrong -- no matter how many times you type imprecise things (I don't think you are doing it on purpose, actually. I think you just don't understand what you are trying to discuss) like "pay 75 years worth of costs," no matter what misinformation you read, and no matter how many different ways you try to create ambiguity around something that isn't ambiguous.

    We are talking about unfunded liabilities for actual employees (not "theoretical" anythings) -- around $50 billion worth at the time the act was passed. The act required the USPS to fund those existing liabilities and spread it out over 10 years, and fund future benefits on an accrued basis. One of us has read the act. ... and it is that simple.

    The USPS is not working with actuarial tables that have any current or past employees projected to live to 140, nor did they have retirees who were hired at the age of 2 and allowed to retire at the age of 4 -- which is what that nonsense you repeated WRONGLY again would suggest, unless it meant that the USPS was being forced to fund billions of dollars of liabilities that don't exist (what the misinformation campaign was trying to suggest to people).

    All the bullshit in the world, including every piece of stupidity the voices in your head think characterize me or someone like me, doesn't create any nuance around the funding mandate. Sorry.

    But if I am wrong, you can point us to the section in the act that mandates retirement benefit prefunding OTHER than what I have said -- including the part that mandates prefunding fictional employees who haven't been born. Have fun.
     
  6. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    From the GAO report:

    The references to “75 years of benefit payments” may represent a shorthand description of the benefits being prefunded. As noted earlier in this testimony where we described the composition of USPS’s retiree health liability, the prefunding target actually covers (1) all projected future benefits for current retirees and their beneficiaries, plus (2) a portion of projected future benefits for current employees and their beneficiaries, such portion accruing over the employees’ careers. This prefunding target would include some benefits projected to be paid beyond 75 years—because, for example, some current employees can be expected to live beyond 75 more years—but it would also exclude some benefits projected to be paid within the next 75 years—because it only includes a portion of the benefits that are expected to ultimately be paid for current employees.

    There is absolutely no doubt that the mandate involves funding in a 75-year window.

    But everybody's wrong. Every media outlet that has written about this is wrong. Ragu is right. There you go.

    Hard to believe that on a Lance Armstrong thread, Lance Armstrong wouldn't even be the person so obsessed with misdirection and being proved right by sheer anger. But you should go re-read your euro collapse thread. It has the same authoritarian air that you have here. To me it's a fucking riot. To you it should be a cautionary tale about how ridiculous you look.
     
  7. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Why did you cut and paste that footnote on page 10, except remove the first sentence that says EXACTLY what I have said over and over again about the nonsense you were repeating?

    http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/661637.pdf

    For others who care, and don't want to click on the link (which he didn't include either) this is the first sentence of that footnote, which LTL dishonestly lopped off:

    That is EXACTLY the misinformation LTL regurgitated on this thread, which led me to tell him what he said was wrong, and has now led to him riding a unicycle all over the thread because I wouldn't back down.

    For anyone else who cares, 75 years is apparently a GAAP accounting number (what every publicly-traded corporation has to conform to) that has nothing to do with what the USPS was required to fund. A misinformation campaign was created around the number. They have to estimate future liabilities on their financial statements, and 75 years is apparently a standard GAAP time horizon for those estimates. It has no bearing on anything.
     
  8. da man

    da man Well-Known Member

    From LTL's own post:

    The bolded part is exactly what Ragu has been saying. They have to estimate 75 years out for accounting purposes, but they don't actually have to pay it unless it's for a past or current employee.

    So it seems the "having to pay for workers who haven't been born yet" thing is BS.
     
  9. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    The "75 years" thing is missing the forest for the trees. USPS does have a requirement to prefund its retiree benefits with no means of additional revenue collection or borrowing power, and that requirement is something no other entity in the U.S. is subject to. Also, the USPS is not allowed to freeze it or trash it like private companies, such as Gannett and McClatchy and more than a hundred others, have done.

    From the CBO "scoring" of the bill in question:

    Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund. H.R. 6407 also changes how the Postal Service finances its share of the cost of providing health care to retirees. The legislation requires that the Postal Service make specified annual payments into the PSRHBF, which will earn interest at the same rate as the CSRDF. H.R. 6407 will require that the Postal Service pay $8.4 billion into the PSRHBF for fiscal year 2007 and an estimated $58.8 billion over the 2007-2016 period.

    Starting in 2017, instead of directly paying a portion of the health premiums incurred by current retirees each year to the FEHB program, the USPS will begin paying for the estimated costs of retiree health care as such costs are accrued by current workers. H.R. 6407 will require the USPS to make yearly payments equal to the annual increase in retiree health care liabilities accrued by current employees. Those payments will be deposited into the PSRHBF. The Postal Service’s share of health care premiums for current retirees will be paid out of the PSRHBF from 2017 forward.
     
  10. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    Yep. As Ragu even conceded yesterday, the onerous terms spelled out in the law were "designed to hasten the death of the USPS."

    And while this was (and is) cynically couched as protecting the workers' benefits, the unions were 100 percent against it.
     
  11. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    The USPS has means of additional revenue collection. Nobody is stopping the USPS from operating and increasing its sales (if it could) to generate more income so it can meet its expenses.

    Yeah, it has no ability to borrow, because it has already borrowed $15 billion from the treasury (something it was never supposed to do; it has been sold as self sustaining since the 1970s) and that was a pre-established limit when they were given permission to tap the treasury.

    If we are going to make the treasury a source of unlimited funds for the USPS, we should at least let go of the trope that the USPS is self sustaining.

    I'm not sure what you meant by "the USPS is not allowed to freeze it or trash it like private companies, such as Gannett and McClatchy and more than a hundred others, have done." I think the "it" you are talking about is its unfunded liabilities. If I am wrong about that, please set me straight.

    If that is what you meant, then we are having the same conversation. The USPS could continue to operate longer than it would before insolvency, and bleed to death more slowly, by funding ongoing operating losses with retirement benefit money that has been negotiated with its employees. It's perfectly legal -- for Gannett or the USPS. It does that in fact, with or without that 2006 act, because that act only addressed its retirement health fund. It didn't make them prefund about $100 billion of other long-term pension liabilities.

    But then let's have an honest discussion about this. The USPS has been running up debt to keep operating an entity that loses money -- in this case, it has been borrowing from its employees for years, via their retirement benefits. It doesn't matter if you are Gannett doing that, Joe's Widgets or the USPS. If you underfund (or in the case of the USPS, don't fund at all) a pension or a retiree health care plan, it's not as if those liabilities don't actually exist. Anyone -- regardless of how they feel about the USPS -- should understand that.

    The two differences between the USPS and a private company, are that when a private company does that, and ends up in bankruptcy (most eventually do -- they had to borrow from Peter to pay Paul because their businesses didn't generating enough income to meet their obligations), those retirees are shit out of luck. They were robbed slowly for years, and there is nothing left. In the case of the USPS, all of us know that there is going to be a populist outcry for the treasury to make good on those debts -- and the USPS has gotten as far as it has on the sale to the public that it is self sustaining.

    Secondly, when a private company promises a future benefit, that benefit has to be accounted for an accrued basis. That is basic, honest accounting. Either the money is put aside and it is accounted for as a cost. Or the money isn't put aside, and that cost gets put on the books as a debt. In the case of the USPS, for years they were using accounting only government entities can, which kept those debts off their income statement to paint a dishonest picture. In the case of the rest of our government agencies, which don't attempt to operate for a profit, it doesn't matter in any practical way. Everyone knows that any money those government agencies cost is owed by the American people -- whether they use dishonest accounting to hide the true costs or not. In the case of the USPS, though, the service is supposed to be an off budget governmental agency that pays for itself. That obviously has not been the case. If everyone was going to acknowledge the USPS can only exist today if it is subsidized -- just another expense item in the budget -- it would be an honest conversation.
     
  12. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    USPS operations from selling postage and delivering mail are profitable.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page