Automobiles in the US were transitioning from “rich guys’ toys” to “necessary vehicles” by 1910. Ford’s Model T was a game-changer but urban taxis were mostly electric then. Delivery vans running on fuel (internal or external combustion) or batteries were more economical than horse-drawn wagons whose power sources needed feed and care whether they worked or not. Some auto engines were designed to burn not gasoline (mostly available from pharmacists) but kerosene - and sly motorists topped-off by stealthily tapping into streetlights’ fuel reservoirs. What a trick!
Doctors, priests, and other circuit-riders were early adopters. One French priest ran an exceedingly primitive gas-guzzler from 1893 to 1935; horses don’t live so long. Cheap DIY kits for cars were sold in the US from 1900 on, but anybody with a lathe could (and often did) build and sell cars. You really should read about pre-WWI motoring.
Before autos, cities and towns in the US were strewn with horseshit. Smog is healthier. But I digress. The USPS serves the American people. Private couriers serve their stockholders, domestic and foreign*. See any difference there? Do “We, the People” exist, or only owners and owned? Privatizing public services seems like the latter. Fuck the public, right?
DHL, the world’s largest courier service, founded in San Francisco, is now wholly owned by Deutsche Post. I don’t know who owns the other big commercial couriers.
Of course there will still be retirees, I’m not sure I understand why you think there wouldn’t be:
Current employees 500,000
Current retirees 600,000
Let’s pretend that in 20 years, all 600,000 current retirees are dead, that still leaves 500,000 future retirees (less the dead ones or ones that quit without vesting).
Those people get whatever their benefits are (based on years served and average high salary) plus their medical benefits, from that point 20 years in the future until they are dead. If average age is 40 then they are just reaching retirement in twenty years.
Let’s conservatively guess that only 400,000 of those employees are still alive to get benefits, that is still probably $5 billion per year for some percentage of people for 20 to 30 years after that point.
That’s conservatively $5 billion * 25 years = $125 billion
Yes, there will be retirees in twenty years, but if the retiree healthcare coverage was 75 years in the future in 2006, that suggests the need to cover people still alive in 2081.
Here is the summary of how this stuff works:
While employee X is working, you save the benefits that they are accruing.
Here is the reason:
When employee X retires, the money has already been set aside and they get their guaranteed money, as opposed to them not getting the money they were promised due to changing business conditions.
Did you disagree with the basic idea?
It sure sounds like multiple posters on this board either don’t understand the math involved, or prefer workers to get screwed in the future. Seems like we should be trying to protect the workers from having the rug pulled out from underneath them when they retire.
“The 2006 law also established a fund for Postal Service retiree health benefits. It required prepayment of those benefits according to a 50-year schedule, starting with 10 years of statutorily prescribed payments of roughly $5 billion from 2007 to 2017.”
This is the same type of formula that has been applied to private companies since 1974. You calc the benefit accrued by each employee each year and put that money in the fund. The benefit is calculated something like this:
1 - Project out current employees duration of employment until retirement and factor in salary increases
2 - Assume the person will live for 30 years after retirement
3 - Add to the fund the amount of the benefit that was accrued this year, lather, rinse, repeat
Here’s a link if you want to learn more about the calculations:
“It is the amount that corporate executives set aside in an account at the end of Linda’s first year of employment in order to be able to pay her promised retirement benefit of $1,219 per year, payable in 45 years, over her life expectancy following retirement.”
Note:
That is retire in 45 years and then get benefits for 30 more years. This is the formula applied to corporate pensions, do those numbers sound familiar?
One thing that was aggressive for the USPS in the 2006 law was that they were only given 10 years to catch up, whereas private companies were given 30 to 40 years to catch up when the 1974 law was passed. But, they only made 4 of those payments, so the impact is reduced but not insignificant.
I personally think it’s a good thing that private companies are required to do this for pensions, and I think it’s a good thing that USPS is required to do it for pensions, and it seems like doing this for health benefits makes sense also if it’s presented as a guaranteed benefit. The reason is that people make their financial plans prior to retirement, and if things suddenly change after they are retired (e.g. entity losing money and can’t make payments) then the retiree is in a pretty bad spot.
So, again, I ask the posters that seem to object to this approach:
1 - Do you disagree that this is a good mechanism to protect worker’s retirement benefits?
2 - If you disagree, do you think we should scrap this requirement for private companies pension plans also?
I’m really struggling to understand why anyone would be against this approach to protecting workers retirement benefits.
Why not answer the questions I asked:
1 - Do you disagree that this is a good mechanism to protect worker’s retirement benefits?
2 - If you disagree, do you think we should scrap this requirement for private companies pension plans also?
My opinion:
It’s a good mechanism
Both private companies and USPS should be required to use this mechanism
I have no interest in your questions. I’ve been pointing out that your alleged ‘debunking’ of the 75-year claim is based on nothing. Having done so doesn’t obligate me to answer your other questions.
I misunderstood, I thought you were interested in understanding what happened and the pros and cons of that action. I personally enjoy that type of stuff.
So do I. But the necessary first part is “understanding what happened.” Your cite-free claims detract from that. You’ll have to pardon me if I have no further interest in engaging with you.
It’s a pretty easy process to educate yourself, that’s what I did (I didn’t just sit around expecting some poster on the SDMB to spoon feed me information and then not only complain but outright attack the poster with hostile language if it’s not exactly in my desired format).
I looked at the following:
1974 law
2006 law
USPS financial reports for multiple years
USPS OIG reports
GAO reports for multiple years
Various articles that describe pension funding from an accounting perspective (non-partisan)
etc.
I made an assertion about the 2006 law, backed by a cite. You have repeatedly expressed an opinion that it’s incorrect.
Since you’ve educated yourself on all these topics (really only the 2006 law is relevant, AFAICT), surely you could put your education to work, and provide language from the appropriate source, with link, that rebuts my assertion.
If you can’t, I can only conclude that, in your process of having exhaustively gone through all those sources, you have been unable to find any refutation.
So I’m right and you’re wrong. Thanks for doing all the work of verifying this for me!
Getting back to saner territory, I’m familiar with a couple of different towns where the residents have no mailboxes at their houses, but go to the local P.O. to pick up their mail.
One is North Beach, MD, which is not too far from where I live, and I’ve got friends there.
The other is Anna Maria, FL, where my wife and son and I have vacationed for the past decade or so.
I have no idea what the reasoning or history is behind either one. North Beach, MD is adjacent to Chesapeake Beach, MD, which does have regular home delivery, and their built-up areas are contiguous. (Collectively, the two are known locally as the “twin beaches.”)
Anna Maria, FL occupies only the northern ~1/3 of Anna Maria Island, with Holmes Beach, FL, which does have home delivery, occupying the middle portion. I could understand the logic of Anna Maria not getting home delivery, because so many of the residences are rented out to vacationers like me. But I assume the same is true of Holmes Beach: the main way I can tell which I’m in is the presence/absence of mailboxes.
Somewhere upthread I mentioned Bisbee Arizona, over a century ago the largest city between New Orleans and San Francisco. Old Bisbee is a vertical mining town; 40% of homes are located on steep stairways, not streets, and many “streets” are barely bikeable let alone driveable. PO boxes are free for residents. You want parcels? UPS and FedEx offices are a few miles away so get going. I think the situation is similar in Jerome Arizona, another vertical mining town. No place for weaklings!
Many shippers in my experience demand a street address and refuse PO boxes. That’s a security measure but it’s still damn aggravating. RTFirefly, do you know if residents of the Maryland and Florida towns face this problem?
By “shippers” , do you mean the places you’re buying from, or do you mean UPS or Fed Ex? Because UPS and Fed Ex can’t ship to a PO Box, although you might be able to get a street address for the PO Box that they can ship to.
Yes, by “shippers” I mean the sellers, not the private couriers. Thanks for that tip on using a local Post Office’s address!
A similar trick I’ve used for mail is to append my PO Box number as the +4 part of ZIP+4. So if my ZIP is 88888 in Fuckall Arizona, my PO box is 4321, and my nominal but undeliverable address is 987 Satanic Steps with a +4 of 6666, I’ll list the shipping address as 987 Satanic Steps, Fuckall AZ 88888-4321. This has worked for me.
Commercial couriers must be burning through their vehicles. The last UPS delivery used a U-Haul truck and the FedEx guy drove a Penske rental.
I’m assuming you actually meant Carmel-by-the-Sea, which steadfastly refuses to have ***addresses. *** Instead, they have descriptions like “Third house on the left after 2nd Ave” or “The red house near Third and Beach.” I really don’t know how emergency services and delivery services like UPS/FedEx deal with it other than grudgingly.
And somewhere, someone said about how it was “illegal” for FedEx to deliver non-emergency letters (whatever those are). The rule used to be that if you had something in an envelope that was mailable as a letter, such as a birthday card in a package with someone’s birthday gift, that you were supposed to affix a stamp to the envelope and cancel it by striking through with a pen. No idea if they ever opened and inspected packages to check for compliance, or if that rule was written purely as a technicality so the USPS couldn’t claim unfair competition or whatever.