"That doesn't make any sense!"
As reported here by Reuters:
The Postal Service chose post offices for possible closure based primarily on revenue. Two-thirds of the 3,830 post offices slated for closure earned less than $27,500 in annual sales, postal data show. Nearly 90 percent of these post offices are located in rural areas, where shrinking populations and dwindling businesses mean the post offices simply cost more to operate than they earn. ...
The statistics show that closing all of the post offices under consideration would save about $295 million a year - about four-tenths of 1 percent of the Postal Service's annual expenses of $70 billion. ...
To match the falling demand, the agency says it needs to cut $20 billion in operating expenses by 2015. Restructuring healthcare programs, eliminating jobs, ending Saturday delivery and closing post offices are among the moves being considered, though some of these would require permission from a Congress that remains deeply divided on how to address the Postal Service's woes.
The postal service question is a matter of civil liberties: the guarantee of private communication. No cost is too high to protect it. That we don't care about it anymore just shows we are no longer a free people.
If we repealed the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, however, the costs of postal service would plummet almost overnight, and we might be less inclined to sell our birthright for a bowl of pottage.
