sir speaking uh...
privatizing
this story really caught my eye
the best fix for the postal service rights
peter or zag formally of the o bomb administration
now where is he working now
the professor or something or is he going out doing public service
week uh... cus and others
or no i'm sorry he's an executive at dusit it back
so peter or a stag
rights uh... of the recent problems with the postal service
the postal service
uh... is expecting to default
for the first time on its annual payment for future retiree health benefits is
according to the uh... times last week
the five point five billion dollar payment
is due august first
the postal service is also scheduled to make a five point six billion dollar
payment
in september
the five point five billion dollar payment was deferred from uh... fiscal
year
twenty eleven d
august payment is for fiscal year twenty twelve
spokesman for the agency said barring intervention from congress it would
default on both payments understand what happens here
in two thousand six the congress
voted to force
the post office
to find
the future of benefits
of retirees on a seventy-five year out windows so in other words people who are
not even born yet
the post office
is
supposed to fully fund over the next ten to fifteen years
benefits for them
to pay outs every five years from now there is no other government agency
there is no other private enterprise
in the country
probably the world
that does this
however a republican led congress forced the the post office to make these
payments
earlier this year
in april the senate approved a bill
that would allow
the agency to make uh...
payments into his health-care fund for future retirees over the next forty
years
which would have lowered the annual payment to about two point five billion
the post office now
isn
twenty-five billion dollars arrears
i believe
for these paints
which of course is the fiber six years since then
it is true
that the post office
is losing money
and need to raise the rate of stance
but eighty five percent of the post office is deficit
is a function of these payments
the republicans in the house refused to allow the post office to spread out
these pains
what is the solution here
when you have a republican controlled house
that is trying to kill the u_s_ post office
what is the solution
says president obama's former uh...
budget manager
he says those who believe in the usefulness of government must be
vigilant about making sure all of its activities are vital ones
since the unnecessary ones
undermine public confidence
with this in mind congress should now privatize the u_s_ postal service
valued citibank
they don't send out there
bills of the of the mail
he writes when the postal service announced that it would be unable to
meet billions of dollars in payments that are coming to an august and
september for future health benefits
it provided further evidence
i don't know what further evidence means
he says the postal service faces three problems first congress is not given at
the permission it needs to cut costs and raise revenue
and other words
he will not allow them
to make adjustments
to the postal service
and basically to raise stance the raised the prices that
and lawmakers seem unable to approve even modest reform second its market has
been declining for years as the email account of payment and other
alternatives
to traditional male have grown third economic slump
has caused a further drop off in mail volume
understand something right now
the post office
charges
the taxpayer
towards receives funding from the taxpayer
in exactly
they get exactly zero dollars
every year from the taxpayer
zero dollars
they have always received
zero dollars from taxpayers
they have been an operation that finds itself completely through the sales of
stamps
postal services
the post office
has also improved
significantly in terms of efficiency
even uh... mister were zag admits the cato institute
noted that decade ago sorting thirty five thousand letters in our required
seventy employees today takes only two
for the past six years the number of career postal service workers has
declined by more than twenty
this is not
and inefficient agency
the post office he writes lost twenty five billion dollars a year for a the
twenty five billion dollars excuse me from fiscal year two thousand seven
the fiscal year twenty eleven
do the math
they're supposed to pay in off five billion dollars plus a year
to fund a pension fund for people who have not even been bored
and that was instituted in two thousand six
so where do you think that twenty five billion dollars comes from pete or is ag
the
former budget manager
high ticket datamatics didn't think it was important to include
in this piece
now here's the point of the roughly thirty two thousand local post offices
across the country
fewer than seven thousand generate and now forever new to cover their costs
that's an important thing to remember here folks
in the case the postal service he writes privatize asian has become the best path
forward
wise
it simply because
congress
won't act
and he says the best way to get around congress now is to privatize the post
office
congress which simply can't bring itself to allow the service to make its own
decisions
and congress would do so as long as the post office remains part of the
government
the post office has many assets which could be manage more efficiently if
congress got out of the way in addition to his thirty two thousand post offices
as four hundred sixty one processing facilities monopoly access to
residential mailboxes and overfunded pension plan
har
these assets would attract betters consider for example that many
processing facilities in post offices
sit on valuable real estate and it may be smarter to sell many of them then to
keep them
he goes the the our counter arguments caution against privatization but none
of them is convincing to pete or zack the first the congress could simply
unshackled the agency
but he doesn't see it
being possible with this polarize congress
so fixing the post office is not an available option because of politics
therefore we should sell off the post office
the second argument against privatize asian is only public sector post office
can provide universal service
he would appear so if only seven thousand
of those thirty two thousand are profitable
post offices
tis anyone in their right mind
a private enterprise
would maintain that
that's just all profit for them there
and he says
privatize ish yet yet in sectors of from telecommunications to electricity
universal service does not require government ownership
let me think about what's different
between electricity and telecommunications
verses the post office
the first thing would be that those wires are already in the ground
the most expensive part
of providing universal electricity
or telecommunications
has already
taken place
that is building the infrastructure their is
no
postal infrastructure
from the post office
to the house
it doesn't exist
well i guess it's a road or perhaps a pony
private enterprise as every incentive in the world
to stop providing that
this is so disingenuous it is impossible to believe
the dismantles not note
is not aware of this difference
he writes privatize issue could come with the obligation to provide universal
service
fedex and u_p_s_ already delivered to almost all u_s_ addresses
yes they do
if you're sending something at a minimum of twelve dollars
so those twelve letters that you get in the the mailbox
at forty two cents or forty four cents a letter
well now casting forty-eight box to receive
or i guess to send
for the hard to reach unprofitable routes a subsidy could be provided
viewers ag saying
congress could actually pay out money to these private companies
service which involves no taxpayer money right now to the post office
this is so unbelievable
and of course this presupposes
that congress is going to agree to pay subsidies
to these private companies
or zag is saying let's have public subsidies for private
mail carriers this is just the most
incredible
steaming pile of or scrap
and i will also say he's probably the best
articulated argument
for privatizing the post office
they can be the same thing simultaneously
which is there is no valid argument
to privatize the postal service
labor compensation accounts for eighty percent of postal service cost a much
higher share
then it fedex or ups
so our exact takes it a step further
not only should we subsidize private companies
for delivering universal uh... delivery
which of course is really
view only relevant thing about the post office right
we should
privatize it
subsidize it
and hopefully they'll cut
the amount of people they hire and employ and cut their wages
so you'll have u_s_ taxpayers
subsidizing
shareholders
c_e_o_s
board of directors
to a tune that is undoubtedly
impossible to imagine wouldn't be
at higher rates of compensation then we now have in the post office uh... postal
service
cutting the wages of
those middle-class workers who deliver the mail and sort the mail
and all because congress
won't have to save the post office would've bold proposals
this is honestly one of the most
douche bag ish
pieces i'd ever
not written by concrete