I'm sorry, but $100M subsidy for the blind is a drop in the bucket for a nation of 300 million -- and I call BS on the rest of the `benefits`.
Let's break down your sources.
The first one simply observes that the USPS holds a debt to the US government. OK. I owe money to Citibank - does it mean that Citibank funded my degree? No.
The second source lists three factors it considers to be `benefits`:
- Tax breaks and Cheap borrowing. Color me surprised that a government-owned entity isn't expected to pay back to the government. It's a subsidy in the same way that every pirated MP3 is a `loss`: the assumption here is that every buck made by USPS could be potentially made by a private company, which would pay taxes on that. This is a claim that I would rate as wild imagination without very strong evidence, given that any system to fill USPS's shoes would have to perform the duty of delivering mail to (nearly) every resident.
- Laws that bar any other shipping service from delivering mail and packages directly to residential and business mailboxes. Well, USPS can't deliver directly into the Amazon's fulfillment center cells either. That aside, again, it's highly unclear how you can translate that to cost to the taxpayers - even if it means profits for USPS.
That is because not every taxpayer is paying anything to USPS.
Official monopolies are a tricky thing - but nobody is screaming about how utilities and telecommunication companies, which enjoy these monopolies, are not self-funded.
They say that a rose by any other name is still a rose. By the same measure, a cactus, even though prickly, isn't one -- even if you call it a rose and write a long article about it.
Let's break down your sources.
The first one simply observes that the USPS holds a debt to the US government. OK. I owe money to Citibank - does it mean that Citibank funded my degree? No.
The second source lists three factors it considers to be `benefits`:
- Tax breaks and Cheap borrowing. Color me surprised that a government-owned entity isn't expected to pay back to the government. It's a subsidy in the same way that every pirated MP3 is a `loss`: the assumption here is that every buck made by USPS could be potentially made by a private company, which would pay taxes on that. This is a claim that I would rate as wild imagination without very strong evidence, given that any system to fill USPS's shoes would have to perform the duty of delivering mail to (nearly) every resident.
- Laws that bar any other shipping service from delivering mail and packages directly to residential and business mailboxes. Well, USPS can't deliver directly into the Amazon's fulfillment center cells either. That aside, again, it's highly unclear how you can translate that to cost to the taxpayers - even if it means profits for USPS.
That is because not every taxpayer is paying anything to USPS.
Official monopolies are a tricky thing - but nobody is screaming about how utilities and telecommunication companies, which enjoy these monopolies, are not self-funded.
They say that a rose by any other name is still a rose. By the same measure, a cactus, even though prickly, isn't one -- even if you call it a rose and write a long article about it.