Going postal

What to do when the entire country is in the same shape as USPS?

“As the USPS incentivized advertising through discretionary second-class** mail rates, business-friendly lobbies sought and succeeded in getting Congress to allow most advertising costs to be deducted from corporate taxes. In plain English, this means that businesses did not have to pay the full cost of what amounted to a subvention to the USPS: taxpayers did. You have to follow the money to understand the politics: The USPS offers small businesses and large corporations alike deals they can’t refuse (or don’t refuse, at any rate), and these businesses and corporations then turn around and muscle Congress to get taxpayers to indirectly foot most of the bill. Are you annoyed by all the junk mail that ends up littering your anteroom floor six days a week? Does it annoy you any more to know that you are subsidizing it? I would guess so.”

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/garfinkle/2012/08/01/how-to-fix-the-u-s-postal-service/

For years now, many have known this: The postal service exists to deliver junk mail.

(**Third-class, actually. Comments rake the writer through some more than warm coals.)