Congress established the US Postal Service as both a business and a service. That may be its fatal flaw.
Kevin Kosar, a vice president of research partnerships at right-leaning, free-market think tank R Street, argues that the post office should continue functioning essentially as it currently does, but with fewer government restrictions, more leeway to change up its business model, and substantial annual subsidies from taxpayers.
“I think for much of the Postal Service’s modern history, starting in 1970 when they were made into this government corporation through 2008, it did a pretty good job of satisfying the multiple stakeholders,” Kosar told Business Insider.
Kosar said that, when times were good, the post office’s dual obligations didn’t pose much of an issue. But as mail volumes declined and revenues stagnated starting in the late 2000s, the organization wasn’t able to keep up due in part to strict government oversight. He proposes a seven-point plan to make the agency more competitive and financially successful, including reducing delivery to five days per week, giving the service the option to raise prices, freeing it from some of its healthcare-benefit obligations, and allowing it to rejigger its collective-bargaining laws.
