As an actuarial matter, for each day an employee labors under a defined benefits pension, you incur some liability in the future. Tech people will recognize this as very similar to stock vesting: irrespective of accounting treatment or payment timing, one day is one day long.
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Grant that the pensions are a big deal. Now forget they exist. Is the USPS profitable? It seems to me that the point the right is trying to make is that they aren't and the USPS's defenders are arguing that they are. That's what's at the bottom of this argument.
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The right's attack on the USPS is a claim about gov's ability to competently run organizations. The left's (clumsy) response is an attempt to say that the existence of the pensions is clouding that analysis.
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Is this why those of us in the workforce NOW are no longer getting pensions, at all... we are lucky if we get a 401k, and even luckier if that comes with a match?!
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Yes, the expense of pensions and the tightening accounting/regulatory regime to avoid massive underreserving is exactly why private employers have largely stopped offering defined-benefits pensions.
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And was set up by anti-tax nuts. So, grain of salt.
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How would one hedge this risk
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@readwiseio save thread -
Done! We've saved this whole thread to your Readwise library so that you can revisit/remember it

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I go back and forth between "pensions are going to be the largest financial crisis the world has ever seen", and "meh, state/local governments already have a lot of debt; having some extra debt off balance sheet probably isn't catastrophic"
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To say that something else is “the largest financial crisis the world has ever seen” at this point in time is a bold statement And probably true
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