If there is one place that would seem obvious to cut it should be the six day per week service of the Post Office.  Cutting to three deliveries per week would cut the need for their fleet in half immediately.

As e-mail has become the de facto message delivery system and online access has become so cheap that printed catalogs are becoming more obsolete the mail has become much less urgently needed.  Furthermore there are options for next day service that the U.S. Post Office does and can still compete with.  How obvious can the comparison be between the profits of UPS and FedEx and the losses of the U.S. Post Office?

The Post Office delivers to your house for free, yet charges you to rent a box to come pick it up.  This makes no sense.

The Post Office has greatly improved its service. Locations are much more attractive, the help is friendly and I love the new stamps; especially the Latin musicians, Gregory Peck and Mark Twain.  The stamps are so attractive that I bet many are collected and never used.  And how many of us have stopped to  recall the days when you actually had to lick a stamp.

The urgency symbolized in the motto of the Pony Express is no longer.  A well composed letter is a rare and wonderful mode to communicate and in my opinion a secret sales weapon for the small business.  But the urgency and necessity has long been rendered obsolete by technology and competition.  Cutting deliveries in half may be the first step to totally privatizing this agency altogether.

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