> so stop pretending it's some government bureaucracy thing
Yep, USPS is not a normal government agency. Also "The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters."*
If people point to USPS as example of government waste they do so out of ignorance.
Not necessarily. There's a big question facing the Post Office right now that becomes acute in the next few months, which is whether the US government will bail out its pension fund, which is utterly and completely unsustainable. Google "post office pension" for things like [1], in which it becomes evident that however they may be not the Federal government de jure they sure are a part of the Federal government de facto, just as trying to pretend Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac are fully independent entities whose actions are wholly their own and have nothing to do with the government is a complete joke. At the very least they have the same special Moral Hazard relationship that the Federal government does not extend to just any "entirely separate business entity".
(The only thing that would be any different if they were an officially recognized Federal agency is that instead of worrying about whether they might in the future cost us billions of dollars in pensions by act of Congress, they would have already cost us billions of dollars in pensions by act of Congress.)
I'm way more interested in de facto relationships that de jure. You can say anything you want legally, what matters is the actual relationships.
If you give me free access to monopoly powers (i.e. you guarantee me no competition), I'm quite sure I can suck the public dry without ever getting a direct handout.
The USPS is waste that endures solely because of government power. It just happens that it isn't government's taxing power that keeps it alive.
They run a deficit because the Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006[1] forced them to pay for the next 75 years of retirement and pension benefits within 10 years, the first downpayment of which they start making payments on Sept. 30 this year, which is why they've been running in the red for two years now.
In 2004, they actually made 4 billion in profit, in 2005, 2 billion, and in 2006 a billion. They've had to prepare to make 5.5 billion in payments each year since due to the PAEA, and will do so until 2016.
Yep, USPS is not a normal government agency. Also "The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters."*
If people point to USPS as example of government waste they do so out of ignorance.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service