You would think so, but the Republicans have been trying to kill USPS for decades, and have managed to pass laws which both mandate that it pay for itself without taxpayer dollars, and hamstring its ability to be profitable. Some of these hamstringing measures were temporarily removed in 2022 as an emergency measure, but the USPS remains without a guarantee of stable funding in the future.
The only thing more inefficient than a purely governmental organization is a private company providing services to the government. There seems to be a persistent belief amonst citizens that governmental services would make them more efficient, more responsive to customers, etc, but following the money suggests different motivations.
The reason it is inefficient is because it provides services that a private company would not, or would charge a ton of money for. The USPS has to deliver mail to everyone with a postal address -- they do a whole lot of 'last mile' deliveries for FedEx and UPS, etc. Getting rid of the USPS means that a lot of people would either not get mail or pay out the nose for it.
Some things just aren't profitable, and frankly shouldn't be. Let's not forget that.
Seal Team Six Bake Sale! GoFundMe for Black Hawk nav system retrofitting! Reservists doing Speedo/Bikini carwashes! I'm sure it would work out great...
Really shows they don't really care about infrastructure. The markets could collapse and FedEx, UPS, and DHL could go under, but because the USPS is still there, you can still send mail from one coast to another.
> but the Republicans have been trying to kill USPS for decades
A little disingenuous. Republicans attempted to force lower government spending by causing a deficit decades ago. The strategy (for those that were good willed) was that a large deficit would politically force spending cuts across the board, obviously including USPS.
No spending cuts have ever been made and the deficit has grown exponentially instead. Congress discovered debt doesn't matter, and now neither side cares.
Welcome to the uniparty. You can continue to pretend DC Democrats and Republicans are different, but they're playing you with fake controversies that never are resolved by Congress
> > but the Republicans have been trying to kill USPS for decades
> A little disingenuous.
No, it's 100% true. I'm not a Democrat by any means and I'm in fact highly critical of the Democrats. But if you look at the history of laws proposed/passed with regards to the USPS, there's absolutely no ambiguity that the Republicans are trying to kill the USPS. This has nothing to do with spending, either: the USPS has not been funded by taxpayer dollars since 2006, with the exception of the 2022 bailout. After 2006, the USPS operated profitably for a few years, but Republicans have passed regulations which prevent the USPS from operating profitably, leading for the need for the 2022 bailout.
This isn't about debt or spending, and it isn't a matter where both parties are the same. I'm not a Democrat, and I don't even like Democrats, but the USPS' funding issues are unambiguously and intentionally caused by Republicans.
I'm not sure what total junk-mail volume is, but the USPS moved 127.3 billion "units" (pieces of mail) in 2022, down from a peak of 213 billion in 2006.
First-Class mail volume was 48.9 billion in 2022, single-piece (which I presume means non-bulk) 12.9 billion.
Assuming an average weight of 100g per item, that's 6.7 million tonnes of marketing (junk) mail, give or take an order of magnitude.
A tractor-trailer rig can carry a maximum of about 45,000 lb (20 tonnes).
The junk-mail delivered in a year is roughly 400,000 such truckloads of mail. Or assuming 5-day/week delivery, about 2,000 trucks operating daily for a year.
(I'm using round numbers as the initial estimate is rough, just trying to give rough scope to the scale.)
Yes, I'm against federal subsidies in many industries. If it's a public messaging system such as USPS, why does it deliver so much spam? How about we just pay for it and stop that part? Everyone loves that with Fastmail vs Gmail - how about we do it for our national message passing?
> capitalism
How did you arrive at capitalism when I criticized federal funding? You think the idea of a federal govt and paying for stuff with public taxes is a core pillar of capitalism?