Sorry, I get irked when I read a comment (that follows) about the U.S. Postal Service that appeared in a thread that was closed for reasons completely unrelated to the Postal Service:
"I think a poll on that would have to be specific in several areas, as in ... if the federal government could run solvently the postal system without a $15.9 Billion Deficit."
First, even though the Postal Service is a quasi-governmental agency, the federal government does NOT run it, nor has it since the early 1970s. See the following (followed by its URL):
'The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an "independent establishment of the executive branch" of the United States Government (see 39 U.S.C. § 201) responsible for providing postal service in the United States. Within the United States, it is generally referred to as "the post office."
'The USPS is often mistaken for a government-owned corporation (e.g. Amtrak), but as noted above is legally defined as an "independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States," ... as it is wholly owned by the government and controlled by the Presidential appointees and the Postmaster General. As a quasi-governmental agency, it has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail.'
U.S. Postal Service is now privately owned. Who owns it? - Yahoo! Answers
Those who focus SOLELY on the Almighty Dollar while ignoring the concept of "public service" often point to the financial successes of private companies like FedEx and UPS. However, I know that I can send a first class letter from here in Florida to the Alaska wilderness, where a bush pilot must fly that letter to a certain point, at which point it's taken by snow machine (or snowmobile, as some call them) to its recipient, FOR A MUNIFICENT 46 CENTS! How much would UPS or FedEx charge for the identical service? I don't even want to think about it....
The delivery success rate by the USPS is in the high 90s percentage-wise. If UPS' and FedEx's rates are higher, it is likely by very little. And the postal costs in the U.S. are often much lower than those in other countries; it once cost me less to send a package from Florida to a rural part of British Columbia (Canada) than it cost my recipient to send it to her recipient who lived 80 miles further! Flat rate priority mail service allows a heavy item to be shipped for exactly that—a flat rate—in spite of the weight. A media mail rate allows media shipments such as books at an extraordinarily reasonable cost. And on and on.
Do these services add to the Postal Service's deficit? For sure! But listen to the hue and cry when there's talk of raising the first class stamp rate by a penny or of closing post offices one day a week. We cannot have it both ways. And as mentioned by another poster in another thread, nothing is free; we provide public services and at the same time pay for them in one way or another....