Let me put my two cents in, please. The USPS has to give the military preferential treatment in hiring. And if they remain in the Military Reserves while they work for the post office then the legislature made them responsible for both pensions - USPS and Military. I've included an excerpt from a Congressional hearing from a number of years back. The taxpayers should pay for the military pensions and the rate payers should pay for the USPS pensions. If they did that it would help immensely.
"The postal service believes it should not be responsible for funding Civil Service Retirement System [CSRS] retirement benefits earned by postal employees while they served in the military," USPS postmaster general John E. Potter told the panel. "We disagree in the shift in the obligation from the taxpayer to the ratepayer."
The Administration, however, "opposes any effort to shift the roughly $27 billion of military costs back to the taxpayer," said Treasury Secretary John W. Snow.
Edit: $27 billion is a lot of stamps.
That's a pretty legit gripe. In the big picture it's just shifting money for accounting purposes....freeing up tax money, and replacing that tax money by forcing the usps to raise prices..a tax increase that wasn't approved is the result to the average citizen. Pretty shady on the higher ups in GOVT, but not directly the post office doing anything wrong.
Post office handles all deployed military personnel mail for free. ups going to do that?
Bottom line is the Government doesn't have ANY money without a tax base. And the tax base isn't big enough to run the government. The Infrastructure in America is falling apart. Yes, the rich need to pay more taxes. But the reality is anyone making less than 40k a year, gets a lot more for his tax dollar the he paid in.
Having roads to drive on, and a military to defend and Fire departments to save your ass, wasn't worth the $1000 you paid on that 40k?
There are so many tax credits available that low income people can get money back for FREE. Yet somehow the one that squak the loudest about "unfair taxes and government"....are the very people incurring the most expense to the government. It's kind of ironic...