The USPS provides the lowest cost option for mailing letters and circulars. Since the advent of the Internet with the attendant increase in email traffic at the expense of physical letters (aka "snail-mail"), circulars (aka "junk mail") have become the majority of mailed items carried by the USPS.

Trying to better compete with the likes of FedEx and UPS, the USPS has introduced in recent years a variety of services such as Priority Mail, and flat-rate envelopes and shipping-packs. In general, USPS solutions are lower in cost than commercial services. However, they do not guarantee timely delivery, and tracking comes at added expense, at which point the service may no longer be price-competitive.

As long as people need to ship physical items (e.g. some folks do not have access to email or e-Commerce), and timeliness is not a primary driver, the USPS provides a useful service.

To better compete with commercial services, the USPS could concentrate on several areas:

1. Guaranteed time of delivery at lower cost than UPS or FedEx.
2. Tracking of all parcels included in price.
3. Improve efficiency to allow price-competitiveness (after all, if the mailman already comes by each house every day, the added cost to include a parcel or envelope should be minimal, so increasing the volume will reduce cost per item).

Not everyone has a computer such as the elderly , so there will always be the need for a Post Office. Plus certain packages such as International isn't always easily done online, plus post offices have post office boxes for people that can't have mail delivered to their home or for businesses that receive alot of mail in a day. Even though I am sure it has hurt the post office by being able to do things online such as printing postage we still have to have post offices and postal workers to deliver our mail to us, handle our packages, and ship them out.

I think the United States Postal Service is an essential element of the American infrastructure. There is no guarantee that FedEx or USPS will survive. DHL has already had trouble. Packages still need to be shipped, however, and are essential to the survival of the American economy. There will always, therefore, be a United States Postal Service. It is also my opinion that it will always be backed by the government as well for the reasons I have mentioned.