The U.S. post office is not subsidized. It's income is derived from the sale of postage. Also it's deficits in 8 of the last 10 years were due to a CONGRESSIONAL mandate imposed by Congress in 2006 to prefund retiree health benefits to the tune of 75 billion dollars over a 10 year period or roughly 5.6 billion a year. A burden no entity in the country has to carry. If you were to adjust the numbers they would reflect that the Service is doing well, even though the margins are becoming slimmer with the decline of first class mail volume. The bottom line is Congress(2006) created this mess for what reason we can only speculate and of course the media very rarely discloses the major cause behind the accelerated decline.