You might think that due to the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression and the well-established transition to the Internet as the dominant medium of communication that the U.S. Postal Service would struggle mightily. Well, you would be right. The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe reports that between Sep. 30, 2008-Sep. 30, 2009, the postal service lost $3.8 billion. That is despite the fact that the postal service executed $6.5 billion in cost-cutting moves, including shedding 65,000 employees. It gets worse: the postal service projects do even less business in the coming year.

In figuring out what to do about the Postal Service, it’s hard to disentangle the two BIG factors. Would things be something close to okay if the economy was okay? Or is our current conception of the federally-run Postal Service no longer relevant? One of the most time-honored examples of how government can work (even George Will likes the Postal Service) may soon become an example of how government is slow to change.

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