Congress has given the Post Office two incompatible mandates. It is to make money like a business . . . but it is not to have any of the freedom that businesses have to, say, close branch offices, cut its delivery area, or change delivery schedules.
This is, to put it mildly, lunatic…
Congress has to decide whether universal mail service is valuable enough to subsidize, or whether it wants the post office to be set free to actually compete. But it cannot survive much longer as neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring–while there’s some hope of a temporary reprieve by reclaiming some past overpayments to pension funds, that extra money won’t last long at this rate.
