Slashdot Mirror
USPS Losing Battle Against the E-mail Age
An anonymous reader writes "An article in the NY Times explains how the United States Postal Service is in dire financial straits, and will need emergency action from Congress to forestall a shutdown later this year. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said simply, 'If Congress doesn't act, we will default.' Labor agreements prohibiting layoffs are preventing one avenue for reducing costs, and laws forbidding postage rates from surpassing inflation rates keep income down. On top of that, the proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services have contributed to a 22% reduction in snail-mail volume since 2006. They're currently hoping for legislation that would relax their economic requirements and considering an end to Saturday delivery."
Strange that /. is missing the real crux of the problem; a bad 2006 law:
>In 2006, Congress passed a law requiring the Postal Service to wholly pre-fund its retirement health package – that is, cover the health care costs of future retirees, in advance, at 100%.
most organizations are allowed to fund retirement and pension funds in a graduated manner that provides funding at the time of need rather than decades in advance. Its almost like this crisis has been engineered...
Source:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/18/is-benefits-law-dragging-down-the-postal-service/
Congress and the Bush Administration passed the 2006 PAEA law which forced the USPS to submit over $5 billion a year in trust fund payments. This trust fund serves the purpose of transferring federal deficit to the USPS and artificially lowering the government's accumulated debt. This is really a story about bad government policy and not about how technology is replacing the need for a post office.
In cases like that you send a registered letter to the agency requesting proof that you owe the debt. That will stop them dead in their tracks, especially given that lately even legitimate mortgage debt often can't be proven to be owed to the party wanting to collect.