When gummint runs stuff - into the ground

USPS

This was Saturday's mail.  I think the heaviest of the week. Four pieces.  The average used to be, and by used to be I mean just a month ago, a dozen pieces,  including several merchandising catalogs.  My first thought was "economy has really tanked.  Nobody left trying to sell stuff."  Then, an alternative explanation loaded.  The postage increase a few weeks ago.  Has the gummint run afoul of yet another Laffer curve, by raising business cost  (tax) in a poor economy past the threshold of profitability?  You can never go wrong by blaming congress first, but I looked stuff up. First, some good news.  USPS Projects Smaller Rate Increase in 2010    Woot-Woo! Another guy, Errol Lewis, offers in the Daily News  this reason for the USPS appetite for mo money, mo money.  A reason reminiscent of what drove our otherwise healthy auto industry into near extinction.  Congressional Union  mandates.  Yes, I'm saying that the US Congress is today  little more than a national union. “ ...  the $6 billion deficit is a burden dumped on the postal service by Congress. By law, the postal service must use current dollars to pre-fund future employee health and retirement benefits, a financial shackling that turns what ought to be a surplus into a deficit. Before the pre-funding law was passed in 2006, the postal service had fallen behind on paying benefits. That problem, however, has been fixed. A bill currently before Congress can - and should - be passed to eliminate the deficit by relaxing its benefit payment schedule. ” If I'm reading this correctly, congress mandated what might be called golden parachute pay, health and retirement benefits, but funding them "turns what ought to be a surplus into a deficit."   Horry Clap, what a concept.  And the fix is to relax the funding rules and be rich again?  Is that what you read?  I know, it sounds obscenely stupid, but we're talking about a congress that capped the postmaster general's pay at 20% more than the salary paid to the vice president of the United States."  Which he got around by giving himself performance bonuses.  What could go wrong.