We at Ethical Markets fully support restoring this savings bank function to our US Post Office and funding new infrastructure at no cost to taxpayers, as in many other countries in Europe and in Japan . – Hazel Henderson, editor
What We Could Do with a Postal Savings Bank: Infrastructure that Doesn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is the nation’s second largest civilian employer after WalMart. Although successfully self-funded throughout its long history, it is currently struggling to stay afloat. This is not, as sometimes asserted, because it has been made obsolete by the Internet. In fact the post office has gotten more business from Internet orders than it has lost to electronic email. What has pushed the USPS into insolvency is an oppressive 2006 congressional mandate that it prefund healthcare for its workers 75 years into the future. No other entity, public or private, has the burden of funding multiple generations of employees who have not yet even been born.