Article from Reason by Eric Boehm.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) finished fiscal year 2018 nearly $4 billion in the red—a whopping 44 percent increase in losses from the previous year, despite the fact that the post office saw revenue increase by more than $1 billion at the same time.
In its annual fiscal report, released Wednesday, the USPS attributed more than $2 billion of the deficit to an “ongoing volume loss”—largely the result of fewer people using the government’s mail system for sending letters—of 3.6 percent. The rest was the result of increasing payments for pensions and retiree health benefits.
Far from being an aberration, fiscal year 2018, which ended on September 30, is a sign of things to come. Without changes to how it operates, the USPS will continue to post losses at “an accelerating rate,” Postmaster General Megan Brennan tellsGovernment Executive.
“Simply put, we cannot generate revenue or cut enough costs to pay our bills,” she says.
Read the entire article at Reason.
Image Credit: By Jericho [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
wpDiscuz
Is it time to start charging junk mailers a fair rate?
Why should they be subsidized to shower me with stuff I do not want?
Over two decades ago, I suggested an Electronic Postal System that would have greatly depreciated the costs of our Postal System. I doubt that I am the ONLY one who has ‘come up’ with more efficient ways for the USPS to perform its duties. Instead of CONTINUING with the same failed policies, year-after-losing year, the government needs to OPEN A COMMISSION for IDEAS to improve USPS, after posting online how the USPS’s current operating guidelines. A ‘reward’ should be awarded for the idea or ideas that are ‘adopted’ as the NEW USPS Guidelines.