The New Republic has a nice article on the post office. Should Businesses Be Run Like The Post Office?. It's short and worth reading the whole thing, but here's the beginning.
"The post office plans to raise stamp prices again. The usual groans about government inefficiency are sure to follow. But the post office doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Contrary to popular perception, it receives no federal funding for its operations, subsisting almost entirely on the fees it charges for delivering mail. It’s a great bargain: It’ll take your letter anywhere in the country for what’s still a modest fee. And when Consumer Reports compared package services, it concluded that ‘the good old U.S. Postal Service is often cheapest by far.’
But put all of that aside. The post office bests the private sector in another way: It’s actually put the money aside to pay for its workers’ retirements. Audits show that, at the end of fiscal 2009, it had contributed enough funds to cover all but 1 percent of future pension obligations to its current workers. The post office does this because it must: Federal law mandates that the post office, like all other federal agencies, finance pensions fully. The private sector faces a similar requirement, but many firms use loopholes to wiggle out of their responsibilities. A recent study shows that pensions among S&P 1500 companies are underfunded by 21 percent."
No comments:
Post a Comment