Gallup: US Postal Service, FBI and NASA are the best Government agencies

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The ratings for IRS are fairly good considering they're a punching bag.

Just think how highly they would be rated if we let them issue transfer payments, rather than letting the glory hounds in the entitlement bureaucracies cut the checks.

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I know that the USPS has long been the butt of jokes, but the reality is that there is no cheaper or faster way to send a letter or package across the U.S. than your local post office. UPS and FedEx charge more for small packages. While the USPS can get a small box across the country in 2 days for under $10, UPS takes 5 days and costs over $10. And the dopes at UPS seem far more likely to damage or lose a package than the post office.

As long as you ignore the cost of public funding, true statement.

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USPS is funded entirely by stamp sales, and not a dime of taxpayer money has gone to operating the post office since 1971... you corporatist boob.

Please don't be so naive and gullible. It makes people lose faith in humanity, and it undermines the notion of NJ pubic education supremacy.

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Sigh. Where do you think the post office gets its funding?

USPS is losing $2B every quarter, and borrowing money from the US Treasury to pay their pension and healthcare obligations. This has already led to numerous bills to dump USPS employees into the Medicare system. Perhaps Medicare is suitable for years of service after 1984, when the USPS started paying full FICA tax, but the older employees from the 50s, 60s, and 70s are not funded.

The public is funding USPS with loans that will never be repaid.

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Hence... OPERATING costs.  Borrowing from the Treasury for healthcare/pension means we have to fix how we fund people's healthcare and pension, not guy the USPS which is still the cheapest and most reliable option for shipping.  Of course, in GOP-land, first step is to **** the workers by selling them off to whoever wants to make the whole thing for-profit based on some misguided principle about the profit motive itself.   

So now that you've discovered at least $15B in public funding, which will probably double or triple after the impending Medicare bailout, you want to refocus the conversation on operating expenses? I admire your zeal, but your eyes have been opened.

In typical clueless American liberal fashion, you bash partial-privatization, though all of your socialist buddies at Deutsche Post and Posten AB have already privatized large portions of their systems.

Grow up quickly. Liberalism in the US is just regressive whining. The changes to make USPS sustainable are not the problem. The problem were the unrealistic promises made by incompetent political operators.