The nightmare scenario when public services are privatized

The part where the same bill that requires them to pre-fund their retirement plan for workers who haven't even been hired yet -- something no other organization, governmental of private, has to do -- also makes it nearly impossible for them to raise rates.

Congress passed a bill that makes it impossible for the post office to show a profit or break even. So they could come back and get rid of it later.

 

You gotta love Republican grasp of cause-and-effect. Abolishing the USPS hurts whom?

Maybe older voters who still live in rural areas?

 

Just so.

Also, too, it's a relatively simple solution, without Congress rigging it.

We can operate the post office at a loss of five billion a year -- which is really a drop in the bucket, as important government services go -- or they could raise the rates a nickel and break even on paper.

We're all paying for it either way.

One of the sillier right-wing tropes out there.

The post office is never a good rebuttal to either side of that argument. It's unique. That said, you could raise the rates to cover the yearly loss and the post office would still operate much more efficiently than private mail delivery companies. It's not even close.

 

When those private companies are forced to serve every single address in the country, no matter how remote, without using the USPS for the expensive ones, then we can compare their profitability to the USPS's.

Until then, apples and oranges.

 

It is, really and genuinely, an absurd political trope. Right-wing interests in government cut or hold down revenues for a governmental entity, then crow that it isn't showing a "profit" so it must be inefficient.

It's the reverse of when liberals tout the results of a program but act horrified if you ask about the cost.

 

Yes.

 

That also was a different generation in which mental deficiences were treated as if the people were just nuts and should be locked away with a minimum of care.

 

Or don't buy cable, buy DirecTV.

 

Forget the pension thing, for now.

The USPS delivers 177 billion pieces of mail, annually.

Raising the cost of a stamp a penny would generate 17 billion dollars more revenue.

Your operating loss of of 5 billion just turned into a profit of 12 billion, and the post office is a model of efficiency.

It's an accounting trick designed to fool people who aren't paying attention.

 

Total agreement.

 

That would be a fair comment for 1875. Not 1975.

 

No prob.

And I agree. Just make it 50 cents already.