President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Unfortunately, a "raise the price of a stamp by 25 cents" thing isn't enough. They negotiated contracts that were ridiculous; to the point that both sides had to have known they were never going to be able to make good on what they agreed to. That is because they were negotiating with an entity that had more incentive to try to buy off a constituency than it did to actually negotiate a contract that was efficient. Except it bought them off with BS -- generous pension benefits that the USPS was never going to be able to fund.

You brought up newspapers. Let's say a newspaper company took that tact with its unions. It promised to fund pensions at insane levels, but then never made the actual contributions. Those workers are SOL.

In this case, because it is the USPS, you are telling me that we need to socialize the costs. First, no, paying more for stamps ain't making up their shortfalls. They are short billions of dollars and are cashflow negative. And honesly, the idea rubs me wrong, because I was the guy who actually protested the trainwreck they were creating WHILE they were creating it.

Gee posted something about all countries having postal services. I suppose in 1790 or whenever, you could have argued that it was a public good of some sort. But in 2018, it is clearly an anachronism. It doesn't do anything that can't be done more efficiently in a competitive environment. To cling to it, and allow the inefficiency and excessive (and largely corrupt) cost we're all going to eventually be on the hook for (when the fantasy that it is not being funded by the government that it has been sold on is finally thrown away), makes no sense to me.