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patio11's profile
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11

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Patrick McKenzie

@patio11

I work for the Internet, at @stripe, mostly on accelerating startups. Opinions here are my own.

東京都 Tokyo
kalzumeus.com
Joined February 2009

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    1. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 Apr 12
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      The Post Office has relatively unique pension treatment, because it is quasi-governmental and part of the spinoff was Congress deciding that the Post Office should not be able to transfer unfunded pension liability to taxpayers.

      1 reply 1 retweet 35 likes
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    2. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 Apr 12
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      So Congress passed a law saying "You don't get to pay-as-you-go. Instead, you need to model out costs for current and previous employees over a 50 year window from retirement date, and reserve adequately against those projected costs."

      1 reply 3 retweets 43 likes
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    3. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 Apr 12
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      Defenders of the Post Office, 10+ years ago, said that this was unfair, because it is relatively unique treatment. The policy was instituted specifically to avoid transferring $100B+ in pension liability to the taxpayer.

      1 reply 6 retweets 41 likes
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    4. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 Apr 12
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      Here's something I wrote eight years ago:pic.twitter.com/PJcbVqUmAM

      4 replies 6 retweets 46 likes
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    5. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 Apr 12
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      "The Post Office would be profitable if only..." is, to be blunt, a lie. It is an accounting fiction. The Post Office was never profitable. It can never be profitable. The interesting argument to have is "OK, then who covers the shortfall here? We lied. We can lie no more."

      3 replies 10 retweets 98 likes
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    6. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 Apr 12
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      This is not a situation unique to the Post Office. It will apply to almost every public pension. It is hitting the Post Office first because the Post Office is constrained by statute to lie a little less blatantly than most public pensions.

      5 replies 26 retweets 152 likes
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    7. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 Apr 12
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      For more reading on pensions, which are going to be the largest financial crisis the world has ever seen, see http://pensiontsunami.com  The site is 15 years old, and this was generally well understood the day they opened and for decades before that.

      7 replies 26 retweets 149 likes
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    8. wanye‏ @_wayneburkett Apr 13
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      Replying to @patio11

      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.

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
    9. wanye‏ @_wayneburkett Apr 13
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      Replying to @_wayneburkett @patio11

      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.

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
    10. wanye‏ @_wayneburkett Apr 13
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      Replying to @_wayneburkett @patio11

      Unless I'm missing something in your analysis, you seem to be saying, "The USPS should be accounting for these pensions this way and there's no way to call them profitable as long as these obligations exist." But it's tangential to the argument each side is really trying to have.

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 Apr 13
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      Replying to @_wayneburkett

      My argument, which should be pretty uncontroversial, is that approximately nobody who says "profitable" means "profitable, if you exclude labor costs", and the only way to adjust the Post Office to profitability is to exclude a large chunk of their labor costs.

      10:59 PM - 13 Apr 2020
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      2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
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        2. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 Apr 13
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          Replying to @patio11 @_wayneburkett

          "They're profitable, if you assume the costs of their pension / retirement healthcare is zero" is a pretty vacuous statement. No adjustment for those costs, whether relatively conservative or sensible but with rather more risk added, gets them close to profitable.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
        3. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 Apr 13
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          Replying to @patio11 @_wayneburkett

          Note that the clueful people arguing aren't saying "They're profitable! Because math!", they're saying "Profitability isn't even a goal, of course we have to inject many billions of dollars into them, it's a government function."

          0 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
        4. End of conversation
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        2. wanye‏ @_wayneburkett Apr 14
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          Replying to @patio11

          Approximately nobody making an argument about the USPS’s profitability is actually interested in the USPS’s profitability. It’s a proxy for something else. And to the extent that’s true, everything you’re saying here is a non sequitur.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. wanye‏ @_wayneburkett Apr 14
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          Replying to @_wayneburkett @patio11

          To see this is true, imagine I’m able to sneak a trillion-dollar liability onto their books today. That would make a noticeable difference in their real-world profitability without either bolstering or detracting from the actual argument either side is making about profitability.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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