USPS is by far the worst mail service I have ever encountered. It's so bad that there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that one can do a lot better, assuming one is allowed to compete. And even though they proudly say they receive NO money from the federal government, they do receive subsidies in the hundreds of millions.
My experience with other countries is Israel and Russia's postal systems, which are both notoriously bad at actually delivering mail. USPS doesn't ever seem to lose my mail, and stuff gets to where I send it in ~3 days, so I've always been a happy customer.
Not to mention consistently misdelivering my mail to other mailboxes. One time, I had to escalate all the way to the region supervisor before I found someone that would actually hear me out. The general attitude seems to be one of incompetence and total indifference.
Essentially none of the major commercial delivery services in the US seem to know anything about actually delivering packages.
UPS/Fedex/FBA/DHL just drop it in front of my house and don't even bother ringing the doorbell. It rains here a good amount and if you don't notice your ghost package fast, maybe it gets soaked through.
Fedex has lied to me multiple times about attempting delivery on days they never did.
But even setting these things aside, USPS is almost always a better experience as either sender or receiver than any of the other competitors in the US.
The USPS tithe isn't the bottleneck, but it would definitely make sense to unwind once a private carrier could break the $2/letter barrier.
This was a normal apartment, in a normal apartment building, in a fairly nice part of town. The only way I ever got a Fedex package (several were sent back as "undeliverable") was if I knew it was coming in advance, to go online with the tracking # and instruct them to hold the delivery for me at the local Fedex office. Then I could pick it up in person.
Fortunately, the local Fedex office was only 2 blocks away from my apartment on the same street.
USPS delivered 100% of my letters and packages on time.
My mailbox stuffed with junk mail all the time (even if I have permanent sticker telling them not to do so). I've even talked to the USPS delivery person and told her not to do so. Next week, same issue. Rinse, repeat.
I've never, ever, ever had a problem with Fedex or UPS. They've been 100% professional and everytime I had to interact with them either on the phone or in a store, I always got good service. With USPS, this was the rare exception rather than the rule.
Maybe they just need to reduce their footprint, and close underutilized sites.
In the US, I mailed something to my mom across town, and she got it the same day that I put it in the mailbox. I rarely saw a letter delivery take more than 2-3 days. Here in Canada, it may take over a week to send mail in the same province. Takes over a month when my mom sends me a letter from the US.
IMHO, they shouldn't get subsidies. They should be a public utility. They provide a necessary channel of communication between citizens and their goverment: taxes, passports, ballots, voter registration, etc. happen through USPS. In my experience (admittedly, I've been in Canada for a decade, so this is probably out of date) they've been much more reliable than any other shipping service, and I don't think any other private carrier does letter mail.
Also receive lots of documents, periodicals, and packages through USPS, never had a problem there either, always in the mailbox or right at the front door. Of course I'd like to skip the junk mail.
USPS seems technically up-to-date as well, more or less. I can schedule pickups on-line, as well as buy and print postage. No complaints.
Yes, it is subsidized. The reason is that being able to send and receive mail cheaply and reliably is the cornerstone of our society and our economic system.
When people talk about International Mail being "subsidized" they're talking about EG treaty negotiations with China that force the USPS to receive international packages from China at significantly below cost. They then have to pass those costs onto the US consumer.
I've not seen any citation which claims the junk mail part of the USPS is unprofitable.
To be clear, I hate junk mail. I've just seen this claim made a few times without citation.
The USPS was founded in 1792 and became self-funded under the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 almost 200 years later, so, no, it hasn't “always” been required to pay for itself.