Fire Departments and traffic lights and all of these public agencies are paid by tax dollars. There is no profit for them, but they do have a budget that they have to operate in. There fore there is no "breaking even." If not enough taxes are collected to pay for this, the employees get laid off. You usually are billed for ambulance service and there are private ambulance services you can sign up for.
Also you pay a bill each month for trash collection so it's not exactly some kind of public service. If you don't pay for it, they don't come get your trash. So yes it is worth something; The $30 a month or whatever it is you pay for it.
And UPS and FedEx have routes just like the Post Office. If someone has paid them to deliver something to your house, they stop at your house. Just like someone paid the USPS money to deliver all that junk mail to your house. The postman doesn't stop at my house if there is no mail for me that day. Maybe they need to charge more for regular mail. But they certainly aren't losing money because they offer some kind of "public benefit."
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Originally Posted by Mavdog
quite a gap in the understanding of "public benefits".
services provided by the government can't be looked at through a profit/loss prism, the benefits to the public aren't quantified or ascribed in simple numbers.
take the fire dept, or the police dept. code compliance? traffic and engineering? does trash collection need to break even, or is there a benefit to the public in having their trash picked up at regulary scheduled times, at their residence, with little waste lost, worth something?
as for lew and the post office, do you actually believe that if ups or fed ex was obligated to visit every home, every business every day, even if they don't deliver a package there, that either of them would be profitable at the rates they charge?
no. there's no way they would, and that public benefit is why the post office loses money. and why the post office is valuable to society.
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