Believe it. Postal Service: We need more junk mail
How are you as a taxpayer subsidizing junk mail?
From your linked article:
The cost to small businesses is 14.5 cents per mail piece.
Junk mail is delivered to the USPS by the customer, so 1/3 of the cost of the pickup/delivery equation is gone... the pickup. Now you have the sorting/routing, and the delivery.
However, a stamp is what... $0.45 now? So junk mail costs 1/3 of stamped mail, but consumes 2/3 of the resources. Now granted, the terms for complying with junk mail rates includes the fact that some of the pre-sorting is done by the customer when submitting the mail.
It still doesn't negate the fact that that piece of mail involves stop-n-go driving at every mail box in a route, every 40-50 feet, while hauling thousands of pounds of paper in a little white jeep-thingy. As well as the folks in the mail delivery system that have to fling around the boxes full of junk mail the same as boxes full of 1st class mail the same, but for 1/3 the rate.
The bottom line:
Because idgit walking around neighborhood gets paid $X amount to deliver 1000 fliers.
USPS charges $X amount to deliver 1000 fliers.
X= X in either case.
However, idgit (and infrastructure behind idgit) gets paid less and has lower operating cost than USPS. Idgit operating costs = $Y, and USPS operating costs (for portions pertaining to junk mail) = $Z.
$Z > $Y.
So, $X - $Y = profit.
But, $X - $Z = loss. As we keep hearing from the USPS. Woe is them, operating at a loss.
So, the operating model of USPS is flawed, if $X - $Z does not generate profit or break even.
Lose $X and $Z from the equation entirely. Focus on $A and $B and $C, where $A and $B are the respective gross sums from 1st class and priority/express mail programs, and $C is the operating cost of delivering those products.
Priority/Express are cost competitive with UPS/FEDEX, so if they operate at a loss then USPS is just flat-out doomed.
1st class could operate just fine at $0.50 per item, if USPS would commit to only delivering 1st class and Priority/Express. Residential deliveries would be more frequent than the 1% that UPS/FEDEX does daily, but probably no more than 10% on any given day... rather than 100% every day.
This ends up reducing the amount of mail sorted, the amount of mail trucked all over, the amount of mail picked up and the amount of mail delivered. Junk mail moves to privatized blanket-area delivery systems via low cost foot courier (i.e. "idgit").
USPS would have to lay off significant portions of its workforce, but the logistical systems behind low cost foot courier businesses would need that expertise. And it would then not be a component of government... it would be a business to stand on its own 2 feet. Or fail. As is proper.