Heard the one about the layoffs at the post office? To make sure everyone received their pink slips on time, they were mailed last year. Often the butt of jokes about inefficiency, the US Postal Service is bleeding red ink just two years after it was put on a more independent footing by Congress. The Post Office’s latest fiscal year ended with a $2.8bn loss on $75bn in revenue. Its accumulated deficit of $7.2bn, covered by a Treasury credit line, is now nearly half the limit allowable by law.

The losses may revive calls to end the Post Office’s monopoly, but these miss the point and ignore its tough operating environment. The main privilege it enjoys is the sole right to deliver to mailboxes – hardly enviable given the accompanying universal service obligation requiring it to be ubiquitous. What private company would deliver a Christmas card to the bottom of the Grand Canyon by mule for 42 cents? With e-mail replacing letters, bills increasingly being paid by direct debit, spam usurping junk mail and credit card solicitations dropping amid the slump, volumes are sagging.