Is the Postal Service Doomed?

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat is supposed to stop the United States Postal Service (USPS) from delivering mail, but can it be saved from mounting debt, plummeting volume, and the not-so-slow-motion postal train wreck coming quickly down the road?

Last week, the USPS barely avoided default when Congress extended the due date for a $5.5 billion payment due to the U.S. Treasury for retiree health benefits. It lost $8.5 billion last year, and it expects to lose nearly $10 billion more in 2011. From 2006 to 2010, overall USPS mail volume dropped by 20 percent, from 213 billion pieces of mail to 170 billion, all while incurring $20 billion in losses. The future doesn’t look so bright, either. In a new paper, Heritage’s James Gattuso explains how e-mail and moves toward other forms of communication have led to the USPS’s decline and what the near-term future looks like for the service: More...

Heritage Foundation——Bio and Archives

The Heritage Foundation is the nation’s most broadly supported public policy research institute, with more than 453,000 individual, foundation and corporate donors. Heritage, founded in February 1973,  mission is
to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.