[ta0o0o0]

  I'm all for strong employee benefits and organized labor,
  but 75 years' pre-funded benefits for retired workers
  seems excessive

Those two things are not related. The prefunding requirement was specifically added for political reasons to screw over the Postal Service.

[crdoconnor]

Those two things kind of are related.

The prefunding requirement was added to give the impression of financial problems so as to manufacture consent for privatization among the public.

A quick look around this thread demonstrates that it's mostly been a successful ploy ("Privatization isn't looking too bad.").

I've no doubt that any privatization that does occur will dump these existing pension liabilities on the federal government, raise prices and strip employee benefits to the bone while jacking up executive compensation.

Textbook private equity stuff.

Whomever buys the USPS will get a cheap monopoly which they can milk indefinitely. This will be declared a success for the free market or something.

[roymurdock]

So you're both [edit: all] saying that Congress is being paid (by who? UPS/Fedex?) to screw USPS over. Do you have any citations?

Why wasn't this mentioned in the article if it's such a well-known scheme?

[ta0o0o0]

  One stipulation of the PAEA has caused controversy. 
  It stipulates that the USPS is to make payments of 
  $5.4 - $5.8 billion into the Postal Service Retiree
  Health Benefits Fund, each year, from 2007 to 2016 in
  order to prefund 50 years of estimated costs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Regulatory_Commission

How many retirees do you know that live fifty years in retirement? If the Post office were liquidated, the retirees would be dead two decades before the mandated fund would run out.

Republicans hate public services as a matter of ideology. They don't need to be paid to do this, they do it for fun.

[dragonwriter]

> So you're both [edit: all] saying that Congress is being paid (by who? UPS/Fedex?) to screw USPS over.

I don't see anyone saying that Congress is being paid to do that. Congress has lots of members who favor privatization of government services in general and the post office in particular, but outright privatization seemed like it would have a political cost that they weren't willing to bear. So they put in that measure, with the intent of building political support for privatization over time.

Whether the preference for privatization is honest ideology, corruption, or something else is its own issue.

> Why wasn't this mentioned in the article if it's such a well-known scheme?

The article mentions the mandate as one of the central problems facing the USPS, and the fact that it is a requirement that neither private businesses nor other public institutions face.

[roymurdock]

Ok, so putting aside whether this bill was the result of political ideology or regulatory capture, where are the citations that back up your claims?

> The article mentions the mandate as one of the central problems facing the USPS, and the fact that it is a requirement that neither private businesses nor other public institutions face.

Right, the point of my original comment was to highlight this seemingly absurd policy. The Economist provides no further explanation. People in this thread are quick to color in whatever details they like. I'm no expert on the USPS so perhaps the Economist has an agenda to push by not including the relevant information.

I was 13 in 2006, so if this really was the result of Bush and his friends in Congress, they did a fantastic job of playing the long game. But I'll wait to form an opinion until I see credible citations.

[Jtsummers]

http://www.savethepostoffice.com/how-postal-service-began-pr...

EDIT:

> I was 13 in 2006, so if this really was the result of Bush and his friends in Congress, they did a fantastic job of playing the long game. But I'll wait to form an opinion until I see credible citations.

Also, IMO your age at a particular time a decision was made is irrelevant. The facts on what happened are readily available. Just because I was 9 when the first Gulf War happened, doesn't mean I can't have formed an understanding of it from (contemporary) sources and later reports, articles, and books. It's almost a reverse ad hominem, an attempt to excuse yourself from a discussion or drawing a conclusion because you weren't present or cognizant at the time. You're capable of conducting research yourself, you're an intelligent, human being. And others have provided citations and discussion throughout this thread on the topic.

[crdoconnor]

>So you're both [edit: all] saying that Congress is being paid (by who? UPS/Fedex?) to screw USPS over.

Lobbyists who want it privatized so it can be milked. Just like social security or a myriad of other things.

>Do you have any citations?

http://angrybearblog.com/2015/03/epic-fail-for-the-postal-se...

>Why wasn't this mentioned in the article if it's such a well-known scheme?

Because the Economist is a neoliberal rag. They're about as likely to say "maybe free market orthodoxy isn't all its cracked up to be" as they are to start running op eds by dreadlocked union leaders.

[mmanfrin]

  So you're both saying that Congress is being paid (by who? UPS/Fedex?) 

Nowhere in his/her comment was anything even remotely close to what you inferred here.

[sophacles]

How do you get that congress was paid to make this happen? It could just be normal republican tactics for proving that government is bad by making laws to move the goalposts when things are bad.

[roymurdock]

Sure, it could be purely political.

The bill might also be a result of regulatory capture, which is what I was suggesting and seems fairly plausible to me.

And I still have yet to see any actual citations rather than speculation.