We DESPERATELY need to start educating Americans on the difference between for-profit businesses and government public services, I’m so fucking serious. The government should not be run like a business!!!
It’s actually vile how the USPS- one of the few government services that’s actually good- is constantly under attack by Republicans and their billionaire overlords and mouthbreathing conservative voters justify it because “well, the USPS loses a lot of money.” You know what burns tons of money for a way worse outcome than the USPS? The fucking US military, but you never catch these bootlickers arguing that we should drop fewer bombs on brown people overseas.
USPS doesn’t lose money, it costs money
It’s…. kind of both. (I work for the USPS so I’m going to refer to it as “we”). It costs money in the sense that you pay for a service, but that only goes so far as the money can be used to cover the costs of the service. Unfortunately, because we receive essentially no tax dollars, the service you’re paying for is… the entire operation of the USPS. Everything we make we make from postage, and that doesn’t always add up to our operating costs. We’ve had to be bailed out by the government a few times in the past decade or so (to the tune of about $50 billion). This loss has resulted in increased postage costs, deteriorating equipment and buildings, and tens of thousands of layoffs
In recent years this has gotten even worse, as the incompetent Postmaster General Louis DeJoy slices off chunks of our operations and sells them off to the lowest bidder. His promise to “run the Post Office like a business” has had disastrous implications for employees and customers alike. Trump has reportedly been considering fully privatizing the Postal Service, which might allow private investors and equity firms to buy us out
What we need is a full reification of the federal government’s commitment to the Postal Service as an agency. We need tax funding (something we had until the 80s). We need to re-envelope the USPS in the federal system. Unfortunately with a fascist president and a Republican Senate it’s not likely to happen
amhrancas 