Doesn't the US Postal Service get a ton of subsidies? I rather appreciate them, and the only reason they may be becoming less relevant is not through a fault of their own.
There are plenty of businesses that become less relevant through no fault of their own (see 'buggy whip manufacturers'). That doesn't mean they require subsidies - it reminds me of Clevinger's father (?) in Catch-22 who made his fortune not growing parsley, investing government subsidies into buying more land on which to not grow parsley!
But the USPS is a good example of a point I've been lingering on since making my earlier comment - at what point does something become a basic right (or expectation, to prevent confusion with the Bill of Rights) in our society? Is postage a basic expectation? Is a home town newspaper a basic expectation? And if so, should we expect our taxes to subsidise them as we do with roads or healthcare?
The US Postal Service gets virtually no subsidies and is a self-sufficient organization. It borrows money, however.
"Since its reorganization into an independent organization, the USPS has become self-sufficient and has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters. However it is currently borrowing money from the U.S. Treasury to pay its deficits."
Then you're using a different definition. In this context, self-sufficiency refers to its financial and organizational position within the United States government as an agency to manage its own finances externally from the Congressional Budget Office and has nothing to do with its bottom line. The USPS is currently running a deficit but has also ran a surplus:
"Despite record gross revenue of $60.1 billion, the U.S. Postal Service ended fiscal 1998 on Sept. 30 with a $600 million profit, $100 million more than projected, but leading industry officials were hoping the USPS could at least match, if not better fiscal 1997's $1.2 billion surplus, which was less than the $1.6 billion recorded in 1996 and significantly lower than the $1.8 billion achieved in 1995."
http://directmag.com/news/marketing_observers_fear_end/
Corporations borrow money, especially when they run a deficit. Yet unless they're a larger part of some organization or the government, most people would call them self-sufficient--the ability to manage their own financial resources.
Sure the most strict definition of "self-sufficient" is to have absolutely no reliance on any external entity for anything, but by that definition then not a single organization in this country is self-sufficient.
Wrong decade. They lost 3.8 billion last year and expect to lose billions more this year [1]. They claim to have operational independence, but the Senate cuts them a check for losses that the Post Office will never pay back because its current form becomes less relevant and necessary every year. Fedex and UPS can do better package shipping, and electronic could take over for almost all documents now.
I say close it down. Auction the assets off, pay post office workers a year or two's pay for no work to appease them, and give some kind of buyout to people with pension plans. Keeping the Post Office running to preserve jobs is a farce and massive waste of important resources.
