USPS

The USPS and its solvency issue is a case of particular interest to me, as a confluence of politics, business, and economics.  You'll likely hear an increasing number of news stories on the subject as we approach a September 30 deadline, where the USPS is unlikely to have cash on hand to make a legally-obligated $5.5 billion prefunding payment to its retiree health benefits fund.

Any other company (or government entity) would just issue bond debt and make the payment, but the USPS is legislatively restricted to increasing its debt by only $3 billion annually.  Any other company would close all its non-profitible branches, but the USPS has a mandate to deliver mail to every square inch of the country (except my front door, which is too close to the post office to receive mail delivery) and can't just write off the state of North Dakota.  In a period of declining mail demand, substantial price increases may just make their financial situation worse.  Unless congress steps in to pay off substantial amounts of USPS debt, or otherwise loosens pension/compensation/benefit funding regulations, or just starts direct federal subsudy of the service, there's no simple inside-the-box solution here.

I happened across some WaPo letters to the editor on the subject, and wanted to touch briefly on some of the presented ideas.

The e-letter would be most advantageous to commercial users who seek to reach large numbers of homes with printed messages. The letter’s content and a list of addresses could be sent to the Postal Service electronically. The letter would be routed to the post office nearest the addressee, where it would be printed and sorted to the individual carrier route to be delivered with other mail....For the USPS, the advantages would be (1) lowering operating costs, as it would not be necessary to ship these pieces of paper across the nation via planes and trucks and (2) producing less pollution from vehicles, in keeping with the USPS’s green efforts.

In terms of operating costs, using 2011 Q3 data, completely eliminating highway and air freight expenses would only represent 8.16% of total operating costs, or 81% of the projected operating shortfall.  This also doesn't factor in the costs of mass-printing and envelope stuffing at the USPS branch level, or implementing the computing systems and hardware necessary.  It'd also require USPS customers to either used some generic web tool, or otherwise have access to a scanner at home or a local USPS branch.  Either way, it likely reduces your client base, by making it that much harder to deliver the document you want to deliver.

Offer an online bill-paying service. The USPS is losing revenue because more and more people are paying their bills online. The USPS should consider establishing a free online billing service that would compete with private-sector services, and it should fund the service through advertising. If the system proves secure, Americans will use it.

Again, this requires implementing whole new systems and infrastructure, just to compete with services that most banks and investment firms (the places that actually hold your money) already offer for free (without advertising).

Reduce the cost of printing stamps by selling software (and the accompanying materials) that would enable customers to print first-class stamps at home. Users could purchase and download new postal designs as they become available. This would allow post offices to concentrate on higher-value services, such as Priority and Express mail.

(1) Priority and Express mail represent 1% of total shipping volume.  It's not clear to me what improvements can be made at the post office level that would let them "concentrate" on promoting a line of industry that represents only 1% of total demand.  Granted that 1% generates 14% of USPS revenues, but they're stuck in competition with other package services, whereas they have the monopoly on first class and standard mail services, and should probably work on milking that cow.  Also, (2) it's called Pitney Bowes.  Printing coils of stamps strikes me as literally the smallest operating expense the USPS incurs, somewhere below their Deer Park water delivery.  (Maybe USPS should start selling water door to door?)