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This isn't accurate.

http://www.sonecon.com/docs/studies/Study_of_USPS_Subsidies-Shapiro-Sonecon-March_25_2015.pdf

The guy who did this analysis is a former treasury undersecretary. Basically, he demonstrates that aside from the fact that the USPS loses billions of dollars year after year on a P&L basis. ... it is doing such a crummy job (on that P&L basis) with subsidies and monopolies that Congress bestows upon it that are worth (i.e. -- cost taxpayers) another $18 billion annually.

As to your "efficient" characterization. ... productivity at the USPS has grown by only .7 percent per year versus 2.5 percent for its competitors -- which are hampered (who has one arm tied behind their back) by the monopoly given the USPS. It is about the least efficient entity that can exist, because it has no incentive to compete. It is granted a monopoly and all kinds of subsidies.

That trope about "pre-financing its future retirement health" is just not true. For years, the USPS was claiming profitability, even though it had made retirement plan promises to its employees that it wasn't funding. ... and wasn't accounting for. It's one thing to have unfunded liabilities. It's another to flat out pretend like those liabilities don't exist, which is what the USPS dishonestly did for years. At one point Congress passed a politicized act trying to force them to go back and fund the PAST liabilities that they hadn't funded, and various labor groups went on a disinformation campaign in which they spread all kinds of lies that still get repeated. It is unadulterated BS. There was no "pre-funding" or pre-financing requirement, as you put it. And regardless of what Congress did, the USPS just ignored the act and hasn't been funding their liabilities for several years now anyhow. That includes the $15 billion debt limit they hit on a line of credit from the treasury through the Federal Financing Bank, at highly-subsidized interest rates (that their competitors wouldn't get). Which is why when someone earlier posted that they are self funding. ... well, that isn't true either. Their losses just get tacked onto our national debt.

On top of it, the USPS gets exemption from state and local and property tax. It doesn't pay tolls, vehicle registration fees, and parking tickets. It pays its workers salaries and benefits far above the rates paid to similar workers in the private sector (which has to make a profit -- it isn't subsidized). This amounts to billions of dollars of subsidy every year.

Your earlier posts about them having to charge higher postage almost made me respond. This actually is the opposite of what the report above concluded. It demonstrates that because they have a government-granted monopoly, it has freed to the USPS from about $20 billion in labor and productivity costs per year. If it was subject to the same competitive pressure as private firms, the report actually concluded that postage would likely be CHEAPER for everyone.