I seem to be a little obsessed with the post office situation. This is really a simple problem. As Kevin Drum notes, the U.S. has just about the lowest price in the world to mail what we call a first class letter. Congress sets the price, keeps it low…then complains when the post office doesn't show a profit. Amazingly, many years — before they passed that awful law that forced the postal service to pre-fund pensions — the institution did eke out a profit, occasionally a hefty one.
Take away the pension thing (which sure sounds like it was passed to deliberately make it impossible for the post office to not run a deficit) and let the price of stamps go up to the level of, say, Luxembourg or Slovakia. The entire United States Postal Service would be financially-stable and probably more efficient.
That would please everyone except for two groups. One is those folks out there who are determined to believe that The Government can't do anything right except, of course, to make war. The other group would be the entrepreneurs who are in (or want to be in) the business of private mail delivery and are thinking about how much money they could make if the post office was gone or they ran it and they could charge a couple of bucks for each first-class letter.