I love the comments crying "The post office keeps losing money!"
Well yeah, that's because the government used to fund the service, but cut that - the 1970s I believe. The post office, by law, isn't supposed to make any kind of long-term profit. The business is supposed to fund itself, but it can't because you have delivery to every point unless you charge the actual cost of carry. The pre-fund retirement thing didn't help, but they only made a few of those payments, defaulted on the rest, and it got cancelled. That hasn't been a problem for years.
The biggest problem is they need to streamline. Cut back on the number of days they deliver, get rid of mail classes, encourage people to use post-office sized materials (the only reasonable discount,) and charge everyone the actual cost. Yeah, it's going to hurt some people that still think they need to send a paper check, but it will eventually settle out into a smaller service with less people, or they'll die completely because of all of the dindu nuffins they hire.
You need every day delivery? Get a post office box.
You need every day delivery? Get a post office box.
The post office would actually be able to survive if it returned to the old way of delivering mail to the post office. Delivering to every single address 5 or 6 days a week was never a good idea. It is even less of one now that most of the important communications are handled electronically.
I'd be happy with one day a week, no saturday or sunday delivery unless you request (and pay for it) or if there are parcels larger than a certain size.
I know that doesn't work for everyone - the person that lives next to me probably gets 10-20 pieces of mail a day. I'd sometimes get his mail for the day, and it was always junk. He's on every mailing list in the world.
Junk mail is exactly what I'm referring to. I'd say 95% of the mail I get is junk, if not more. I only go to my mailbox once a week, and that's if I see that something of value was delivered. I signed up for "USPS Informed Delivery" years ago. They send pictures of what's to be delivered to my email. I let it pile up until something worth getting arrives. The rest I toss in the trash or run through the shredder.
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