[jeffc]

Hmmm . . .

Mail volume rose for years, costs must go up to meet the increase in demand. Volume now goes down, cost must continue to rise for ?????? What?
What does it take for cost to go down? Competition?

[muawiyah]

Good point ~ PLUS ~ to clarify what you said, the number of households getting mail delviery increases irrespective of changes in mail volume. Setting up the system so that carriers can stop at every point on the route costs something even if no stop is made on any given day.

At present the United States supposedly has 19 million surplus EMPTY houses and condos. At the same time as recently as 10 years ago there were a mere 60 million houses and condos.

That 19 million is nearly a 1/3 increase in the number of stops with essentially no change in population, and certainly without a concomitant increase in the expected mail volume.

Overbuilding of houses and condos with below cost illegal alien labor has given us a collapse in home prices, millions of unemployed people, the destruction of the Postal Service, and a near meltdown of our banking and credit systems.