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It wouldn't bother me in the least if stamps jumped to $1.50 - STILL an enormous bargain...
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They could let up a little on the junk mail discounts.
and everyone could help out by returning all those postage paid return envelopes .
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USPS needs to expand its options, for one.
I have a P.O. Box for my business, and my chosen P.O. (which is one town over, but *worlds* better than the one just down my street), though low-staff, is friendly, helpful, and pleasant to deal with. There's rarely a wait and when there is it's never too long.
Still, I'd rather have something at a UPS Store. Why? Package delivery. I get a lot of stuff via shipment, and I try to do USPS delivery via Amazon whenever I can. But I sure as hell wish the USPS accepted signature-type delivery from courier services.
And, actually, I know they're pilot program doing accepting FedEx and UPS signature delivery at some locations. I had a nice chat with my local postmaster about it and an email from the national guys to discuss it. My location isn't slated to try it for a while, but I'm told it's coming in 2013 "all over the place".
As far as culling delivery dates; fine by me. I don't get a lot of postal mail these days that's time-sensitive (though a few companies still do bills that way, I've opted for ebill and online payments for most of my bills).
What they need to do is expand Saturday hours for counter service, however. This is when most working people can take care of their own mailing and shipping. I'd take a cut day during the workweek to have that available.
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They were given ten years to prefund 75 years of pension/medical benefits, based on projections of how many people they'll employ 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now. So to answer your question, they're prefunding pensions for future employees that haven't even been born yet, much less hired.
No other government agency, no private business is required to do this.
Of the $15.9 billion, you can't say it was all "lost." Some 11 billion of that is for these prefunding obligations. That's not losing money, that's having Congress starve you of operating expenses so that they can justify privatizing the post office and making two dozen white men very, very wealthy.
