Does the US Postal Service Need to be Sold?

There is a lot of talk from President Obama about closing the post office on Friday and Saturday to save money.  While on the surface this may seem like a good financial decision,  think about this question.  How many profitable businesses would consider closing their doors to save money? If closing your doors saves your business money, would you consider closing your business everyday?

Any successful private business makes money when the doors are open, however when it comes to government run business the opposite seems to be true.  The United State Post Office loses money everyday the doors are open.  We all should really ask why not just shut the doors everyday and save the country even more money.

The Post office has been running at a loss for several years:

2007 - $5.1 Billion
2008 - $2.8 Billion
2009 - $3.8 Billion
2010 - $8.5 Billion
2011 - $5.1 Billion

We live in a time where electronic communication has become more prevalent then traditional mail.  Ironically instead of this being an additional reason for closing the post office, some democrats have proposed taxes on electronic communication to supplement the sales lost.  This though is the type of logic that comes out of Washington DC.  A more efficient and cheaper form of communication has evolved that does not cost the government anything.  So democrats talk of taxing email to support a long-standing form of communication (U.S. Postal Service) that is becoming irrelevant and costing the government to operate.

We should put the whole operation up for sale tomorrow and allow a private business to run it profitably.  We could sell the operation and the property assets.  The time has come for us to ask, "Do we need the US government running a postal service, especially when it loses money and we live in an era where privately operated business exists to fill the void."