What should be done with the United States Postal Service?

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The Postal Service may close 3,700 stores as it struggles with a huge deficit. But is that a big story when the USPS is facing a gap of $20 billion?

Any other business would have long ago stopped Saturday delivery. Yet the USPS is still wasting money doing it. Besides, who needs mail even five days a week? Maybe the banks, who want their mortgage and car loan payments. So I say offer the USPS should offer them an option to pay extra for additional mail delivery.

In other words, run it as a business. It’s my belief the USPS should be sold off and become a truly private company. (Editor’s note: The USPS receives no tax dollars toward its operation.) I admit that wouldn’t have worked in an era when they were a monopoly, but today mail volume is down because people use e-mail, texting, video chatting, calling, you name it, to stay connected.

When people have parties now, it’s rare to get an actual invitation in the mail. You get an e-vite in your inbox, right? I’ve even gotten a few wedding invites by email recently…and they weren’t shotgun weddings either!

As we try to figure out what the roles of government should be, we need to re-examine a lot of things. In the early days of our country, it made sense that delivering the mail would be an integral part of the government because we were a sparse population spread out over rural areas. But that no longer makes sense.

And along those lines, regarding the fight in Congress about the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)…why in the world is the FAA a government agency?!

Canada long ago privatized its air traffic control and runs one of the best systems in the world. Not that they don’t have their problems; all organizations do from time to time. But they privatized and modernized the whole system.

So I believe we need to rethink every function that is in some way federal and consider the following: Should it be that way? Why is it that way?

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