Progressive Politics

John Oliver did a great dive into the Post Office, and I think that segment is up on YouTube for free.

It's actually even more impressive than you think. The only reason it looks like it's losing money is that conservatives passed a law that forces them to fully fund the USPS workers' pensions today, rather than investing some money and letting it grow. No private companies fund pensions this way, nor does the rest of the federal government.

In 2022, PSRA was passed which removed this requirement and the postal service has turned a profit ever since. It operates better and more efficiently than any privately held parcel service, because it takes advantage of truely massive economies of scale.

And as an American living in a country that privatized their postal service-- god damn do I miss the USPS. It was both cheaper and more reliable than what we have here.

There are no stocks or profit sharing to make money on via USPS for the board of directors. They receive a salary, and I'm sure they receive bonuses based on performance (not the board level, per se, but postmasters and supervisors can).

USPS is actually a national treasure that we should be very proud of. Representatives of USPS went to Germany several years back to teach them how to efficiently institute 6-day delivery. Our "snail mail" service taught the Germans how to do something more efficiently.

Ass the other commenter said, USPS doesn't receive any taxpayer funding, all of their revenue comes from the sale of postage and their other services like PO boxes and such. They actually used to offer basic banking services too, back in the day, but not anymore.

The retirement funding they referenced was for employees who weren't even hired yet. Thanks to an act passed under Bush Jr, USPS had to pre-fund 75 years worth of pensions, and they were (and are) the only government agency to have that funding requirement levied on them. Simultaneously, USPS cannot change the cost of postage, only Congress can do that, so for almost 2 decades we were forcing USPS to fund 75 years of pensions while not allowing them to set their own postage rates.

If you want to know why USPS is the way it is rather than the Department of Mail like it used to be, I'd start with the Postal Strike of 1970. Thousands of NYC carriers went on strike after being denied a raised while Congress gave themselves one, Nixon called in the national guard to deliver the mail (and they failed spectacularly), and in return for giving up the right to strike, the Dept. Of Mail was reorganized into the USPS. (If I'm remembering all my history right, it's been a few years, I used to be a carrier.)