Conservatives are fond of claiming, “The government is inefficient at everything it does. Just look at the US Postal Service compared to the private carriers.”
First, the USPS is not a government agency. It has been self funded by revenues it earns from its services, exactly like UPS and FedEx are, for over 30 years now. What money it does receive from the US Government is not a handout. It’s payment for the franking privileges (the right to send mailings for free) Congress and other government officials are given.
Second, the Post Office handles everything from individual letters to packages of nearly all sizes at far lower rates than all the free-enterprise guys do in most cases. You can make a case for FedEx if you cherry-pick just the right weight and delivery timing, but on just about every weight, package size and delivery timing the USPS is way less costly than the other carriers. On packages that fit their “If it fits it ships” boxes, their 2 to 3 day Flat Rate deal is a phenomenal bargain compared to FedEx, UPS and DHL.
And why this false argument annoys me is that the Con Men trot it out to support their belief that if we just cut taxes to next to nothing and “starved the beast” (beast being our federal government) this country would suddenly become more prosperous than anything the Earth has yet seen and all problems would right themselves overnight. That’s as ridiculous as claiming that a car can drive itself through busy rush-hour traffic in New York’s Times Square, but one with an expert driver at the wheel is sure to crash. All we need do to examine the results of starving the beast is look at Somalia. They have the Con Men’s dream of no government there, and it sure hasn’t produced my idea of a paradise on Earth.