kane

The problem is that for decades they have not been kicking in the retirement. In most companies if you have a 401K or some kind of retirement the company adds money to the account every pay period (or quarter or however often they have it scheduled) so that they are adding money into your retirement fund the entire time you are working there so when you do retire and start to draw it, they already have it set aside.

The post office (and many other government entities) didn't do that. They said, "You get a pension." but they never set any cash aside to pay for said pension. So when you retire and you start to draw it, your pension becomes another expense for them. Now as all those baby boomers are retiring it is starting to hurt.

They have changed their course and now are funding pensions as they go, but there are billions worth of unfunded pensions still on the books for them so by funding current pensions and still paying out of pocket for older pensions it has put a huge financial burden on them. Add in that their revenue is declining and it is a perfect shit storm for them.

In my eyes the USPS will never be profitable again and we as a nation will have to decide whether we value the service enough that we will pay for it or of we don't want it anymore and we can scrap it and use other alternatives that will take its place.