[mdrabla]

The artificial nature of the USPS's debt comes from the fact that congress passed an (unusual) requirement to make it prepay health & retirement benefits.

"The debt it carried jumped from $7 billion in 2008 to $10 billion in 2009. At the end of 2019, the GAO calculated that the Postal Service had $160.9 billion in debt, $119.3 billion of which came from retiree benefits" https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/15/postal-se...

[unishark]

I can't access the article, but don't postal employees get the same (unsustainable) retirement benefits as government employees? Of course the costs of those benefits are ballooning. The retirement age is far earlier than life expectancy; it's simple math. What alternative is proposed that would make it past a union sitting on 120B in benefit commitments already?

[vel0city]

It is not necessarily that the retirement benefits are so extreme, it is that the Post Office singularly has a requirement to pre-fund its retirement fund massively in advance. No other agency is required to do so.

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2020/02/hous...

The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act has pretty much been at the core of why the USPS has had such extreme woes.

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

[ardy42]

> I can't access the article, but don't postal employees get the same (unsustainable) retirement benefits as government employees?

Can you clarify? My understanding is that US Federal Employee retirement benefits (for new employees) have been comparable to private sector benefits since some point in the 80s, though existing employees at that time kept their old, more generous pension plan.

I think this might be what I'm talking about: https://www.opm.gov/retirement-services/fers-information/

[bobcostas55]

Unless you think the money to pay pensions will magically materialize out of thin air in the future, I don't see what's artificial about it. They have obligations to pay and recognize them.

[ardy42]

>> The artificial nature of the USPS's debt comes from the fact that congress passed an (unusual) requirement to make it prepay health & retirement benefits.

> Unless you think the money to pay pensions will magically materialize out of thin air in the future, I don't see what's artificial about it. They have obligations to pay and recognize them.

My understanding is every other entity that has similar obligations is allowed to pay them as they go.