Most (perhaps all) private companies do not have to pre-pay retiree benefits, but then again, most companies don’t get a government-protected monopoly on mailboxes, an exemption from property tax, and a waiver for vehicle registration fees. Most private companies haven’t borrowed $10 billion from the Treasury. Can we really blame the Treasury for wanting that money back? For wanting that money back, in installments, over time? Can we blame the Treasury for providing a loan and then managing it the proper way?
We have been here before. A year ago, the postal service was in this same spot: about to hit its debt limit, and unable to pay what was owed to the Treasury. What did we do about it? We kicked the can down the road. Congress passed a resolution delaying the deadline by which the postal service had to pay up.
vacation. So, we’re left with an insolvent Postal Service.
There are a great deal of issues with the USPS. Large companies, nonprofit organizations, and certain government officials get huge discounts on postage. People are sending less mail today than we did years ago. The postal service lost 26 percent of its volume in four years. Nearly all letter carriers are unionized. They receive high union wages; The average letter carrier makes $51,390 per year. An active-duty sergeant in Afghanistan with six years of experience makes $34,636 per year. One of these people works in a place that struggles to provide day-to-day services, even with a great deal of help from the U.S. government. The other one works in Afghanistan. When we assign the same value to delivering letters as we do to risking one’s life for this country’s ideals, something is seriously wrong.
We can debate the details of the USPS all we want, but we ought to be focusing on the pattern that the USPS default follows. The problem at the Post Office is a mandate to pay retirees that cannot be fulfilled because the agency is broke. These payments represent a fraction of the Postal Service’s activity. But the very same thing -paying retiree benefits- represents just about all of what the Social Security Administration does.
The Social Security Administration can’t exactly decide to raise revenue on its own (that would mean a tax hike – which would require Congress to act). Similarly, the Post Office cannot raise fees without the approval of a regulatory agency. The Post Office can consider cutting certain services, though not all cutbacks would be approved – Social Security can’t exactly decide not to send out checks every
month. The Social Security Administration is partially removed from the free market, just like the Postal Service is.
Social Security is in trouble. Just like with the USPS, we dealt with this last year. The government couldn’t make the payments it was supposed to – payments like Social Security – unless it borrowed more money. We kicked the can down the road by raising the debt ceiling. It must be nice to be the government– every time you hit a wall, you can just move the wall and keep on going! It’s like a Choose-Your-Own Adventure, except Congressional inaction chooses the adventure for you, and the adventure is awful. So, that is to say, not like Choose-Your-Own Adventure at all.
Social Security is still falling down into the debt spiral. But the postal service is showing us that default can happen to government agencies. It will be far more expensive to fix USPS now, than it would have been to fix it before it racked a huge debt. It’s easier to crawl out of a hole when the hole is shallow… and very difficult when the hole is billions of dollars deep. This sets a frightening precedent for Social Security. We should get Social Security on a path to solvency now, before it, too, has to default. Some restructuring pain now might just be able to save Social Security from genuine crisis down the road. Because when we ship a government agency to hell in a handbasket, the postage is devastatingly high.
Angela Morabito (@_AngelaMorabito) joined TheCollegeConservative as the Director of Public Relations from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC, where she studied Culture and Politics. She completed an internship at the Society for International Development and served as the Communications Director for DC/Virginia Students with Newt. Additionally, she served as the Public Relations Director for the Hilltop MicroFinance Initiative, Inc., the second-largest student-run micro-lending group in America. Her work has been featured by Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, CSRWire, FastCompany, and many others. Angela Morabito is a native of Marietta, Georgia.
She now serves on TCC's Executive Board.
You seem to be speaking to a point that I didn’t make. I never said that what soldiers do isn’t more difficult or important or that they don’t deserve higher pay (which they DO get.) My point, again, was that it was really unfair of you to suggest that postal workers are somehow overpaid for doing a job that truly is very demanding. And again, your comparison of the compensation between postal workers and soldiers is completely misleading. I think the “real problem” here is that you don’t understand how military pay works. The monthly PAYCHECK for a sergeant in Afghanistan is going to be about $4,500. They do not pay income taxes, so that is the actual amount of money that goes into the bank. That is completely separate from any additional benefits they receive (which I did not even come close to listing all of.) A postal worker would be making about $4,300. BUT they DO pay income taxes, so that actually comes to about $3000 in the bank per month. Clearly, postal workers do NOT make more than soldiers. My question is, are you being deliberately misleading by drawing this comparison or is it just the result of lazy research? Either way, the little dig you took at postal workers was totally unnecessary to the point of your article. If you wanted to write about people who are comparatively over-compensated for jobs that truly are completely useless, you could certainly have found many more worthy targets.
Yes, the military benefits are well-deserved. Postal workers also get benefits – granted, smaller than the military ones – but they get benefits as well, which I also left out – I looked at base pay for both jobs. The figure I quote in the article represents active-duty pay.
And do I think it’s easy to be a postal worker? Nope. But is it easier and safer to be a postal worker than it is to be a soldier? Those two things aren’t even on the same planet. (Lest we forget that postal clerks make about $48,000 – $52,000 per year, on average.)
Being a soldier requires specialized training.
Being a postal worker requires hardly any training at all.
Soldiers don’t get lunch breaks or holidays off.
Postal workers get all of those things, and then some.
A soldier who doesn’t do his job properly can put his life, or the lives of others, in danger. He could also cause national security issues.
A postal worker who doesn’t do his job properly gets something delivered late, or lost in the mail.
The stakes are much higher for servicemen and women.
The benefits are higher – but the pay still isn’t. And that’s a real problem.
as former military it was much harder in the usps, for my letter carrier spouse got non replacement of workers in the office, went from one 40 hour work week to 105 hours a week without a day off, micromangment for everything from dental apt to trying to get his dads day of death off, to his daughters wedding day off, since he was fighting for staff, and in fact had one last grieavance illigally denied, illigal removal of staff, and died after doing food drive, I expected him to die in the war not delivering letters and the attack is deadly due to the greed on the retirement money.
You really could have made your point without being quite so dismissive and flippant as to what postal workers actually do and how they are compensated. I have a friend who has been a mail carrier for the USPS for thirty years (and who is also a die hard conservative and a sergeant in the National Guard) who would be foaming at the mouth if he happened to read this. “When we assign the same value to delivering letters as we do to risking one’s life for this country’s ideals, something is seriously wrong.” We DON’T assign the same value! The comparison between a soldier deployed in Afghanistan and a postal worker is completely misrepresented and poorly researched. That figure of $34,636 a year is BASE PAY. You forgot to mention that they also receive hazardous duty pay, hardship duty pay, family separation allowance, housing allowance, and basic subsistence allowance (if they choose.) All together that comes to $54,989.76 per year TAX FREE. Considering that postal workers DO have to pay income tax, in reality, you could pretty much flip the two salaries you cited. http://usmilitary.about.com/od/militarypay/f/combatpay.htm
And let’s not forget that soldiers are also given free medical care and education benefits for themselves and their families that would make your head spin. And in my opinion, they deserve every bit of it.
Having said that: do you think it’s easy to be a mail carrier? How would you like walking around in neighborhoods some people wouldn’t even want to drive near? They spend hours walking around in temperatures that exceed 100 degrees or that drop below zero degrees. They have to worry about falling on ice, being chased by dogs, skin cancer, heat stroke, and, yes, even being shot at. The fact that they work for a business that is failing does not make them any less hard working or deserving. It is a tough job, and it comes with its own set of risks.
That sentence gave me pause as well, since Conservatives are notorious for implying/outright saying that major CEOs deserve their massive saleries while their employees get just minimum wage. (In some cases, CEOs make 380 times their lowest paid employee.)
No kidding!!! If she wanted to complain about occupations that receive more than they contribute, you would think that would have been a little more to the point!
postal widow
on October 22, 2012 at 4:47 am
whats worse is the fact that postal workers should be getting hazzardous duty pay, for that is exactly what it is. The USPO was formed by benjamin franklin and sam adams to promote communication to win the revolutionary war , very few people realize it predates the nation and the constitution, a debt of gratitute is owed it but the attack on the usps is not just for reasons that maybe circulating so here are some facts, for background information free google book to read, The Post Office, its past record, its present condition and its potential relation to the new world era, Daniel Calhoun Roper, 1913-1917. recommend that to all. the USPO formed one of the first unions which fought for social security, medicade, minum wages, hours and benifits, almost every american working benifits from the labor laws in the country, except currently the attack is on that, to take the country back to the 1920s before the labor laws existed, so then if you destroy the biggest union and the constitution you are free enterprizing. chelle is correct that is what happened to the USPS, first in 2000, 2001, the employee were made to pay an extra 15 percent to their retirment systems, both the president and congress thanked them for their sacrifice under the 1997 budget reoconliation bill, for budget reasons so the retirement was a cash cow, and overfunded, then the next attack came on the profits, in which since there was too much money in retirment set up another one, from 2006-2026, giving an appearance of bankruptcy while the money is held in escrow and complaing that the usps is broke since they have drained the profits. CEOs were gving a bonus under the paea, all top 13 including legal counsel. Then part of the law was broken and also non staffing givnig to lower crafts to overwork then , and not replace retirees that had too much money in retirement . http://www.postalmag.com/joygoldberguspsstress.pdf or awpu 3800 first area ticounty local, PA, stress in the workplace articals, including how the ongoing violation of the guiding principles of the usps is creating a toxic work enviroment. go to search type in http://www.billburrasjournal.org-misc, read by scrolling down the elevator, phoney excuses for diverting usps revnues and myths versus facts, then go to search type in ALEC/Koch Cabal The Privitization of USPS for Ups and FedEx, bob sloan, vltp , then go to examiner.com, Tim McCown, articale june 10, 2012, ‘behind all the schemes and lies of the privitization of USPS” search for scribd( net) the battle for democracy and the USPS, also go to http://www.mpwu.com/crisis_in_the_post_office.htm go to http://www.savethepostoffice.com
You seem to be speaking to a point that I didn’t make. I never said that what soldiers do isn’t more difficult or important or that they don’t deserve higher pay (which they DO get.) My point, again, was that it was really unfair of you to suggest that postal workers are somehow overpaid for doing a job that truly is very demanding. And again, your comparison of the compensation between postal workers and soldiers is completely misleading. I think the “real problem” here is that you don’t understand how military pay works. The monthly PAYCHECK for a sergeant in Afghanistan is going to be about $4,500. They do not pay income taxes, so that is the actual amount of money that goes into the bank. That is completely separate from any additional benefits they receive (which I did not even come close to listing all of.) A postal worker would be making about $4,300. BUT they DO pay income taxes, so that actually comes to about $3000 in the bank per month. Clearly, postal workers do NOT make more than soldiers. My question is, are you being deliberately misleading by drawing this comparison or is it just the result of lazy research? Either way, the little dig you took at postal workers was totally unnecessary to the point of your article. If you wanted to write about people who are comparatively over-compensated for jobs that truly are completely useless, you could certainly have found many more worthy targets.
Yes, the military benefits are well-deserved. Postal workers also get benefits – granted, smaller than the military ones – but they get benefits as well, which I also left out – I looked at base pay for both jobs. The figure I quote in the article represents active-duty pay.
And do I think it’s easy to be a postal worker? Nope. But is it easier and safer to be a postal worker than it is to be a soldier? Those two things aren’t even on the same planet. (Lest we forget that postal clerks make about $48,000 – $52,000 per year, on average.)
Being a soldier requires specialized training.
Being a postal worker requires hardly any training at all.
Soldiers don’t get lunch breaks or holidays off.
Postal workers get all of those things, and then some.
A soldier who doesn’t do his job properly can put his life, or the lives of others, in danger. He could also cause national security issues.
A postal worker who doesn’t do his job properly gets something delivered late, or lost in the mail.
The stakes are much higher for servicemen and women.
The benefits are higher – but the pay still isn’t. And that’s a real problem.
as former military it was much harder in the usps, for my letter carrier spouse got non replacement of workers in the office, went from one 40 hour work week to 105 hours a week without a day off, micromangment for everything from dental apt to trying to get his dads day of death off, to his daughters wedding day off, since he was fighting for staff, and in fact had one last grieavance illigally denied, illigal removal of staff, and died after doing food drive, I expected him to die in the war not delivering letters and the attack is deadly due to the greed on the retirement money.
You really could have made your point without being quite so dismissive and flippant as to what postal workers actually do and how they are compensated. I have a friend who has been a mail carrier for the USPS for thirty years (and who is also a die hard conservative and a sergeant in the National Guard) who would be foaming at the mouth if he happened to read this. “When we assign the same value to delivering letters as we do to risking one’s life for this country’s ideals, something is seriously wrong.” We DON’T assign the same value! The comparison between a soldier deployed in Afghanistan and a postal worker is completely misrepresented and poorly researched. That figure of $34,636 a year is BASE PAY. You forgot to mention that they also receive hazardous duty pay, hardship duty pay, family separation allowance, housing allowance, and basic subsistence allowance (if they choose.) All together that comes to $54,989.76 per year TAX FREE. Considering that postal workers DO have to pay income tax, in reality, you could pretty much flip the two salaries you cited.
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/militarypay/f/combatpay.htm
And let’s not forget that soldiers are also given free medical care and education benefits for themselves and their families that would make your head spin. And in my opinion, they deserve every bit of it.
Having said that: do you think it’s easy to be a mail carrier? How would you like walking around in neighborhoods some people wouldn’t even want to drive near? They spend hours walking around in temperatures that exceed 100 degrees or that drop below zero degrees. They have to worry about falling on ice, being chased by dogs, skin cancer, heat stroke, and, yes, even being shot at. The fact that they work for a business that is failing does not make them any less hard working or deserving. It is a tough job, and it comes with its own set of risks.
That sentence gave me pause as well, since Conservatives are notorious for implying/outright saying that major CEOs deserve their massive saleries while their employees get just minimum wage. (In some cases, CEOs make 380 times their lowest paid employee.)
No kidding!!! If she wanted to complain about occupations that receive more than they contribute, you would think that would have been a little more to the point!
whats worse is the fact that postal workers should be getting hazzardous duty pay, for that is exactly what it is. The USPO was formed by benjamin franklin and sam adams to promote communication to win the revolutionary war , very few people realize it predates the nation and the constitution, a debt of gratitute is owed it but the attack on the usps is not just for reasons that maybe circulating so here are some facts, for background information free google book to read, The Post Office, its past record, its present condition and its potential relation to the new world era, Daniel Calhoun Roper, 1913-1917. recommend that to all. the USPO formed one of the first unions which fought for social security, medicade, minum wages, hours and benifits, almost every american working benifits from the labor laws in the country, except currently the attack is on that, to take the country back to the 1920s before the labor laws existed, so then if you destroy the biggest union and the constitution you are free enterprizing. chelle is correct that is what happened to the USPS, first in 2000, 2001, the employee were made to pay an extra 15 percent to their retirment systems, both the president and congress thanked them for their sacrifice under the 1997 budget reoconliation bill, for budget reasons so the retirement was a cash cow, and overfunded, then the next attack came on the profits, in which since there was too much money in retirment set up another one, from 2006-2026, giving an appearance of bankruptcy while the money is held in escrow and complaing that the usps is broke since they have drained the profits. CEOs were gving a bonus under the paea, all top 13 including legal counsel. Then part of the law was broken and also non staffing givnig to lower crafts to overwork then , and not replace retirees that had too much money in retirement . http://www.postalmag.com/joygoldberguspsstress.pdf or awpu 3800 first area ticounty local, PA, stress in the workplace articals, including how the ongoing violation of the guiding principles of the usps is creating a toxic work enviroment. go to search type in http://www.billburrasjournal.org-misc, read by scrolling down the elevator, phoney excuses for diverting usps revnues and myths versus facts, then go to search type in ALEC/Koch Cabal The Privitization of USPS for Ups and FedEx, bob sloan, vltp , then go to examiner.com, Tim McCown, articale june 10, 2012, ‘behind all the schemes and lies of the privitization of USPS” search for scribd( net) the battle for democracy and the USPS, also go to http://www.mpwu.com/crisis_in_the_post_office.htm go to http://www.savethepostoffice.com