Would the private post office be drained of money by the federal treasury too? As it is now, the Post Office subsidizes the federal budget. It has been overcharged $11 billion in pension funding and has to pay the absurd $5.5 billion per year for future health benefite 75 years into the future. So, in effect they are funding for people who not only don't work for the Post Office, they aren't even born yet.Sununu convenietly doesn't mention that.

Here's the problem with the private sector running post offices: congress wouldn't allow them to close small, inefficient post offices because small inefficient post offices, like small inefficient schools, define the community. Big business wants to consolidate everything, including farms. The American public, on the other hand, values personal service.... and as the "shareholders" the American public has told Congress they are willing to pay a premium to keep the personal services they love.

There is a lot of good here, but one caveat. Sununu states that a private company can write a decent mortgage. Is our memory so short that we have forgotten all the fraud in the mortgage industry that led to our current difficulties ? In medicine we call that dementia.

More free enterprise is always better for the consumer. If the government sold the Post Office to a private business, it could eliminate a source of our deficit. The challenge though, would be that no private business would take on the pension liability with a ten foot pole. It would be a major transition, but one which would make mail delivery less expensive, and more reliable.

Ever see what it costs to mail something through FedEx or UPS versus the Post Office? Yeah, it ain't cheaper. It's way more expensive. So don't give us the same old nonsense that private is always cheaper. Look up how some of the privately run prisons are doing in some southern states, also now more expensive than they were in the past. Government ain't perfect, but it's idiotic to think the private market is that much better.

"Prefunding Fact: USPS has to save now, or it will not be able to afford retiree health care later. If they can't, taxpayers will be on the hook for billions of dollars. To protect taxpayers from covering USPS large unfunded liability on retiree health care benefits, Congress mandated that USPS make a series of catch-up payments, often called "prefunding," starting in 2007 and going through 2017. These catch-up payments will ensure USPS has saved enough money now to meet these obligations later. Within the next few years, the annual costs of paying current benefits will dwarf current costs. Saving now is the only way to make this affordable later, and prevent a taxpayer funded bailout. Though the Postal Service was created to be a self-sustaining entity- taxpayers stand behind this large and growing liability. If the Postal Service were allowed to immediately cease making these catch-up payments, it would have an unfunded liability of nearly $100 billion by 2017. This would clearly be an unaffordable burden for an entity whose core business and revenue is steadily shrinking. It would likely result in a taxpayer funded bailout of postal workers' retiree health care payments. The annual deficit of the Postal Service now easily exceeds its entire annual catch-up payment, illustrating its fiscal problems run much deeper. http://postal.oversight.house.gov/postal_surplus.html

BTW - don't forget that the post office doesn't pay local property taxes

Private enterprise is often shorthand for subsistence wages, no pension, no healthcare, one or two billionaires.

If the columnist wishes to address mail service, why rely on a far-fetched analogy with rocket travel? How about addressing the service ethos of the mail service? In so many towns in America the post offices are an valued anchor contributing to identity and social cohesion. In recognition of this, politicians of both parties and at every level oppose the closing of even the lowest-volume offices. Sununu seems not to want this factor to be part of the discussion, but it will be, and even a privatized service would have to make promises to retain rural delivery and rural offices. Whether they would be kept is another matter.

The poor old Department of Motor Vehicles. Always suffering at the hand of government cuts. Always told to make more with less and then always used as an example of what is wrong with government. Handy device that. The Post Office continues mostly because it is in the Constitution. I believe Ben Franklin was in charge of the first Post Office. It is one of America's oldest and most cherished institutions. NEW PARAGRAPH I could do very well without the post office. It's all bills (which can be done on-line), and ads. Anything that I have shipped to me is shipped through a private carrier. John, the trouble with your plan in today's economic climate is that no politician would touch it. If Romney were to win and then cancel-out the post office the unemployment rate would skyrocket. The Post Office employs somewhere around 575,000 people nationwide. NEW PARAGRAPH I predict that once public sector unions are killed in some of these states with Republican governors (Ohio, Michigan etc.), they are going to run into the same problems. Unemployment will skyrocket. People will go on the dole and if the governors say no to additions to the safety net you'll have people in the streets. Talk about political suicide.

John, it was so much simpler when you and your dad were running a tiny little state, wasn't it? Here's the problem and at least one other person has pointed out below. Buy moving to a for-profit model, you all but guarantee the elimination of service in more rural areas. Of course in NH this wouldn't be a huge problem because there just isn't any large area of mostly empty space (people in Ware could just scoot over to Manchester for their mail). But try to implement this model in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, Nevada, etc. and you'll be dooming large portions of the population to no service and/or services run at exceptionally high premiums. See, it's not a business. Just like a public library or a city subway, it's a public service that recoups part of its costs through service fees. But any of those services would quickly become prohibitive for the people who rely on them in a for profit model. And in the end you would just have a mail service for rich folks.

John makes an interesting argument but in the end fails to recognize that it was government that made it possible for the private sector to take an interest in space. Does he really believe some entrepreneur would look up at the night sky and say, "Gee that's interesting I can make a buck there." Government support, government interest as reflected by public interest has always led the way in technological advance whether through the DOD or NIH and a myriad of other publicly funded programs. But hey, I'm tired of this old argument with the Sununu's of the world, perhaps it is because I'm old and my time is running out. You folks want to return to the stone ages, you want to degrade your standard of living, you want the rich to get richer and the middle class to shrivel up and die. Go right ahead wreck the place. There will always be another civilization to advance you human progress, it doesn't have to be us. Let history look at us as we do the Romans, a people to caught up in their own self-interest to care about their own civilization.

How would you describe a "union type"? I'm actually a manager myself but I'm always interested in gleaning the insights of others. Personally, I much appreciate the efforts of my current mail carriers and several of her predecessors. The folks at my local post office are similarly efficient and pleasant. Gross generalizations are usually off-base and yours is no exception.

Don't forget soldiers, whose selfless sacrifices you and Mr Jacoby dismiss as illogical! Should we go to an all-mercenary armed forces model? Who in their right minds would put life and limb at risk for the peanuts that our services offer? Leaving your patriotism aside for a moment, if the private sector could do better than the USPS for comparable service and lower cost, why aren't they doing so now? What exactly is in their way?

Thanks....very apropos!

Senator Sununu, with all due respect, I'm beginning to understand why our sister state to the north only gave you the one term as Senator. The capital pouring into aerospace right now is a reflection of the potentially "stellar" profits to be realized by the early adopters and innovators and their investors. Mail, on the other hand, is a currently necessary utility but its usefulness is ebbing with the new technologies and its potential for profit is marginal at best and only to be had by diminishing service and employee investment. But your comparison of these disparate "industries" is so clever. Many of your readers will appreciate this remarkable insight, but it strikes me as intentionally obtuse and with a distinctly political agenda. I thought you GOP types were the ones accusing Democrats of class warfare. What is this about? Fire the mail carrier, scrap his pension, and give his job to a minimum wage earner who can't live on the salary? In my 60 years, there are few things that I have learned to count on. But putting an envelope in a slot and being pretty sure that it would arrive anywhere in the USA by day after tomorrow was one of them, as well as feeling pretty good that no one would steal my refund check. You want private mail, use UPS or FedEx. I'll stick with the USPS, thank you very much! But then I don't have your money to buy mail service that "must absolutely, positively be there". Remind me again, why aren't you a Herald contributor?

I don't see the Obama administration, indeed Obama himself, as rejecting a private enterprise doing something that has been traditionally in the public sphere. Just because you assert he would, does not make it so. If the private sector wants to try something, then by all means do so. And good luck. I hope it works out. I am a Democrat and I support President Obama. I don't see him advocating otherwise. Why would he?