The Post Office Follows Il Postino in Finances

As the WSJ notes, the U.S. Post Office is about to ask for another rate hike, to 46 cents from 44 cents for a letter, an increase of 4.5% or 3-4x the rate of inflation. It seems to have been doing this for the better part of a decade now. And it still lost $3.5 billion in the last quarter alone.

Today the average postal worker makes $83,000 a year in wages and benefits, roughly 50% above the average compensation for private workers, according to federal wage data. Those benefits are already so generous the post office could save $560 million a year if the mailman paid the same 28% share of employee health premiums that other federal employees pay, which is still below the norm in the private economy. Normally when a company is losing $16 billion a year in revenues, unions see the need for concessions.

The sad part is that Obama and the Democrats think the government does such a great job and running the Post Office operations that they want to make this the norm for every private industry.