True or false: The U.S. Postal Service is struggling financially because e-mail and the Internet have rendered it obsolete.
False.
Yes, this independent agency of the federal government has reported losses—billion-dollar losses—in recent years. But technology is not the cause.
Rather, in 2006, then president George W. Bush signed into law the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act [PDF], which mandated that the USPS set aside 75 years of health-care costs for its retired employees over the ensuing 10 years.
“No other corporation or government agency that I know of has to prefund their retirees’ health benefits [like this],” says Philip Rubio, assistant professor in the University Studies program at North Carolina A&T State University, in Greensboro. “We’re talking about postal workers who haven’t even been born yet.”