The Second Continental Congress founded the U.S. postal system in 1775, with Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general.  As of 2017, the United States Postal Service employed more than 500,000 people and has reported its eleventh straight year of losses.  The USPS said in a statement that it believes that an increase of the price of the first class forever stamp from 50 cents to 55 cents will help to keep the agency competitive.  Only a taxpayer-funded government monopoly would argue that raising prices will make it more competitive in the marketplace.  

Is the post office the definition of a permanent government program?  After more than 240 years, can we agree that at least this particular piece of federal government bureaucracy has outlived any reasonable lifespan?  We are well into the information age, driven by microprocessors that, among other things, allow all of us to communicate almost instantaneously with people all around the planet.  Why does the USPS believe that it has to remain competitive?  Why shouldn't we just phase it out over a couple of years and honor it with a "job pretty well done"?

Scores of private delivery companies would be able to take on the workload and leave the swollen behemoth that is the federal government just a smidgen leaner.  It increasingly seems as though the answer might be that the USPS is a Democrat-dominated union jobs program that delivers a lot of government checks to a lot of people – many of them Democratic voters.