Why does the 'US MINT' need to make a profit?

Am all about the first two. Easy drives, both. Never been to the third. Strasburg and Scranton, yes. Altoona, no. Thanks for the bucket list addition.

 

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My most recent excursion was the Flight 93 Memorial in western PA, very emotional place but very lovely area when I was there this summer. Sometime I would really like to check out Philly, and some more of Pittsburg - I like old bridges!

 

Here's the strange part about traveling from Philly to Pittsburgh - somewhere along the way, the Cheese Whiz comes off the sandwiches and the french fries go on. Yet amazingly enough, in both towns the pronunciation of the NFL team in Philadelphia comes out "Iggles" and the one in Pittsburgh is "Stillers". But in between them, we have figured out how to pronounce both the name of our national bird, and the Black and Gold guys.

 

That's the fun part of travelling for me, talking to all the people and hearing all the different accents. My accent is a blend of Boston with the occasional y'all.

 

By the way, if you keep having that redux problem... Gaviscon.

 

I really don't have issues with the post office from the service point of view. I seem to always get my mail and they always seem to deliver my mail properly. I really only have a problem with subsidizing anything. Why can't we just pay for the service that we get? We keep spending more money as a nation each year and they we take in from revenues. I'm willing to pay $0.50 for first class mail in lieu of $0.46 if it is the actual cost of delivering the typical piece of mail.

 

The post office hasn't been subsidized since it was spun off in ca. 1971. Of course the overall downward trend in mail volume has hurt it, but the big issue was funding retirement plans into the future.

But I agree that it should be a self sustaining entity, unfortunately the legislative body of our government cannot yet again get their act together and let the post office run like a business - ie be self sustaining.

 

That's the point, though - USPS would be profitable were it not for the ridiculous prefunding pension system Congress forced upon them. It's the only reason they're losing money.

 

If USPS isn't being subsidized by the taxpayers, they would have filed for chapter 11 years ago. By the way, I'm not blaming anyone at the post office for this issue. The problem is us and the folks we re-elect each cycle that have no business sense. Why do they have no business sense? Because most of us want stuff for less than it costs. Can you imagine anyone winning an election by saying they were going to close half the post offices or the other dreaded thing of raising the taxes to pay for them? Nope.

 

It has been 25 years since USPS received a cent of government subsidy. They're losing $5 Billion a year because of the retirement fund mandate, yet - because of that mandate - have $335 Billion in the bank for the retirement fund which they can't touch.

 

Thanks for stealing my response SuperDave

 

Always a pleasure.

 

They also have the headache of not being able to set their own prices for their services. They look at their services and costs and decide "we need an increase of X to cover costs", but then a government committee decides whether or not they can have that increase, and in most cases they approve an increase of LESS than what they need to break even (Looks good to constituents, "I held your costs down"). They tell the USPS to run themselves like a business, but what other business has someone else (who probably doesn't look at the cost analysis) decide how much they can charge?

 

The government should be running a lot more like a business, otherwise the elected officials should be shown the door - just like a business.

 

In other words, we will eventually be subsidizing their retirement since it is significantly underfunded.