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Did you think that Revenge of the Nerds was going to be a hit movie while working on it?

They probably do. It was called "grossing up" when I was relocated a couple of times. The taxable relocation benefits were grossed up to help cover the anticipated taxes. So for example, if my taxable relo benefits were $50k, my company would gross up my expenses and pay something like $62k, and would have withheld $12k for my expected taxes.

I assume the same thing could have happened with Oprah. She may have covered both the taxes, plus a bit more grossing up to cover the additional tax on what she covered.

The PMG is correct that the major mailers are also your customers. Not only do business mailers send out virtually all of the standard mail, the majority of first class mail is sent by the same business mailers, not the general public. These mailers don't care about the Postal Service's financial problems -- they just want to get correspondence to their customers in the most cost effective way possible.

In this day and age, most companies are trying to get their customers to receive and send correspondence online. Just look at any of your utility company's bills, your bank statements, your credit card statements -- most of them have ways to pay the bill online, as well as receive your bill via email. Some offer incentives to sign up for online billing, which saves them money in the preparation and mailing of statements in the future. Others (such as Bank of America) charge a monthly fee to receive a paper statement, which is another reason to dump BoA.

And you can't blame them. Just think what it takes to send out bills and receive payments via the mail.

• They have to generate paper bills for each customer along with return envelopes
• They have to constantly check for address changes and update their lists, or they will get a nasty letter from the USPS along with a bill for not following Move Update guidelines
• They have to use Intelligent Mail Barcodes just to get any form of large mailing discounts, so their systems have to be updated to generate them for each letter
• They have their mail sorted (usually by a third party presorter) in order to receive discounts based on the sortation level
• They incur transportation costs getting the mail to the USPS, or get less of a discount if the USPS picks it up
• They have to have a larger mail room operation and accounts receivable to receive physical checks from customers

All of this costs a lot of money for companies, when there is a much cheaper alternative nowadays. Just think about how many steps and costs are reduced when a customer receives and pays their bill online.

On the residential customer side, most banks also now offer online billpay, which allows customers to pay bills without writing a check and mailing it. My bank offers it as a free service, and it saves me a good $5 a month in postage alone.

What this means to the USPS is that letter mail volume continues to decrease year after year, which is one of the reasons for the USPS financial woes. You can raise the pre-funding issue all you want, but even without it the USPS is losing money.

While the USPS has increased its parcel business, there are other businesses that are allowed to deliver parcels as they are not restricted by the Private Express statutes. Without letter mail and other mail protected by the Private Express statutes, there is no real incentive for the USPS monopoly to exist anymore. You can only point to the Constitution for so long before people question the need for a quasi-government run Postal system.

TL/DR: If letter mail volumes continue to decrease year after year, the discussion will be when to privatize the USPS, not if to privatize it.

Spotted the Chicagoian and likely Cub fan. Only place in the world I've ever had an Old Style was at Wrigley.

Muthafuckin bootleg fireworks!