Let’s Get Real About Postal Reform

April 29, 2019 The Heartland Institute By: Edward Hudgins

For decades, I’ve criticized the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) for its high operating costs, inefficiencies, and abuses of its monopoly status. With a deficit of $3.9 billion in fiscal year 2018—a continuation of years of losses—it’s no wonder that addressing its problems is again on the agenda of the administration and Congress.

USPS is, in some ways, lurching in the right direction. Policymakers, therefore, need to get real about reform. This means not buying into sexy-sounding but impractical and even counter-productive schemes and, if possible, helping USPS along its way.

USPS holds a legal monopoly on the delivery of letter mail. It also operates under a universal service obligation. It must deliver to every address in the country. This obligation was justified before the era of trains, planes, automobiles, telephones, radio, TV, and the internet, as a way to facilitate personal and commercial communications and help bind together our vast, young country. In our technological era, is such a mandate and monopoly still necessary? Should reform start here? The short answer is “no.”  In this political era, such changes are not in the cards.............To Read More....