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In the US, the post office is soon to be bankrupt. With its current cost and revenue structure, US postal service would need heavy government subsidization to survive going forward and it'll only get worse as electronic communication continues to make paper mail obsolete. Paper mail is extremely inefficient. It is far cheaper to send electronic mail.

I think we should ask the question of whether we still need a government operated postal service. If we do continue to have one to help connect the country (especially in rural areas), I think it should be restructured along the lines of UPS and Fedex (thus the marginal cost to send a letter would be much higher--the mailman would need to make far fewer stops and they can close many offices).

A few years ago, I thought that the US Post Office should have created a closed email system linked to someone's real identity for official government business and other important email. The system would be more secure and you could only send email within the system. They could charge a low fee per email over a certain threshold, thus it would eliminate most spam. People have physical addresses and this email system would be an e-address. Regular email or this official email system would essentially replace all paper letters.