The big sell of the postal service is that it costs the same amount to send a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles as it does to send a letter from the bayou in Louisiana to Honolulu, Hawaii. In this, physical mail is the big equalizer.
No. They charge the same amount to send those two letters. It does not cost the same amount, however. Regular physical mail delivery at current prices is unsustainable. Period.
Just interpret "it costs" as "it costs the user" and use the plain English definition of cost as "asking price, market price, or selling price" and you'll arrive at the original poster's intended meaning.
I assume that for the second part of your comment, you consider "Regular physical mail" to be letter post, because we will always need packages to be delivered.
It is still sustainable. The USPS is being forced to prepay its retirement benefits 75 years into the future (i.e. for people that aren't even alive yet or are just being born).
It has been profitable to the tune of a couple hundred million a year. The issue is that it can't afford to pay 5.5 billion that congress mandated that it pay each year. It is 20 billion in the hole, but only because congress made a ridiculous demand of it that no other organization, public or private would be required to make.
No. They charge the same amount to send those two letters. It does not cost the same amount, however. Regular physical mail delivery at current prices is unsustainable. Period.