If the government “shuts down” tonight, the U.S. Postal Service will still operate. Christmas cards and packages will continue to move. Sorters will sort, drivers will drive, carriers will carry.

I put “shut down” in quotes because the range of things that cease seems to narrow with each successive shutdown. Law enforcement, military operations, air traffic control — none of it stops. That’s not to trivialize a lapse in appropriations. Policy, oversight, planning and procurement people, for instance, stop work so the government unravels a bit. Contractors suffer. And nearly all federal employees, on or off the job, endure delayed payment of their salaries.

Why single out the Postal Service? Last month it announced a financial loss of $9.5 billion for the year. That’s in the same order of magnitude of losses at, say, Boeing. But more than for Rivian, a maker of funny-looking but expensive electric SUVs. It will lose around $3 billion this year.

Rivian will also get an Energy Department loan of $6.6 billion, supposedly to restart a plant in Georgia. The company says it plans to build 400,000 vehicles a year there, some day. It hopes to make 49,000 this year at both places it builds them. Some of Rivian’s trucks sell for more than $100,000, but the company loses money on every one it sells.

So, while the outgoing Biden administration subsidizes Rivian, the incoming Trump Administration vows to privatize the Postal Service. Such is the weird world we live in.

It sounds a little strange, the idea of privatizing the USPS. For one thing, USPS already is woven in with private trucking and parcel companies, and they with USPS.

More fundamentally, since 1971, after major reform, USPS was to operate like a federal chartered corporation. In the agency’s own words, “It is an independent agency of the executive branch, yet it is required to operate like a business. It generally does not receive tax revenues to support its operations and must compete for customers.” 

Nothing private would ever deliver to all of the 170 million addresses USPS does. Or if a private entity did, it would probably charge $50 to send a light envelope to Sleetmute, Alaska. And take a month to do so. The USPS, however corporate it might want to be, is constrained by its rate setting commission, its board of governors, and an incoherent Congress.

A private entity would likely have greater workforce flexibility than USPS. In its loss statement, USPS attributed 80% of its losses “to factors that are outside of management’s control, specifically, the amortization of unfunded retiree pension liabilities and non-cash workers’ compensation adjustments.” What the Postal Service calls controllable losses amounted to $1.8 billion.

Everyone needs to stop pretending the Postal Service is a business. No one serious argues that the nation should have a postal network with universal service. Anyway, it’s in the Constitution. I often say, in Postal-related interviews, if people love the Postal Service, then buy a box of stationery, a pack of Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pens, and a sheet of Forever Stamps, and write and mail some darn letters. I actually do that, only with refillable fountain pens.

Packages bring the most revenue to USPS, followed by first class mail and marketing mail. First Class and universal service cause the operating, “controllable” losses. So rather than privatize, why not face the fact that, short of $2 first class stamps, which would accelerate decline of first class, universal service is a net cost to the nation. Given the revenue it does bring in, the shortfall doesn’t seem like such a lift when there’s money for $6 billion in essentially handouts to just one financially shaky corporation.

As for the structural losses in employee costs, perhaps that could be partially addressed by contractors running the processing centers. Perhaps. Everyone thought commercial cloud computing would cut information technology costs, too. Maybe a better course is to let the current plan of Postmaster Louis DeJoy run its plays. Accept reasonable delivery standards for the out-there places. And quit pretending USPS is UPS with white trucks.

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