I've been twice now in WV, in counties so far away from everything, the only government presence is USPS. The only proof you're in the modern US is USPS (and a bit further a weird, small public library near a weirder Dollar tree).

Some people have trouble getting their retirement money, other are destitute who found a new, non-homeless life (but have trouble with debt collection or just lost their papers), And from what I've understood, USPS has buildings and employees present everywhere and is really trusted in those deep parts, more than anything the government does.

Wouldn't offering basic banking (and maybe limited but free internet access) be a nice addition to help the poorest in the US?

Just an idle thought I had for a while

I could not disagree more.

While I agree they don't "need" to be profitable and we "could" just give them tax money the fact that they try to be in the face of competition and come pretty close to doing so despite some dumb requirements really results in an incentive structure that puts them head and shoulders above pretty much any other subsection of government one interacts with. So perhaps let's not remove the incentive for profitability.

Edit: And before anyone tries to construe this as me advocating for privatization or anything else like that, I'm saying they're fine the way they are (on a macro level, I'm sure there's tons of individual items that could use refinement, like any organization) and ought to be a model for other government functions.

>and has progressively made one of the greatest public services worse.

What? Are you joking? Have you ever tried to do anything other than a bog standard transaction at the DMV or get anything beyond typical "homeowner pays professional to do typical thing" type work permitted? The USPS is one of the most user friendly services in existence even once you get off the beaten path of sending standardized envelopes and parcels. If you restrict the comparison to just federal services it's not even close except perhaps some very specific common workflows but even then when it goes off the rails it goes off the rails way harder and is way more painful to resolve. Ask anyone of social security age if you don't believe me.

I enjoy Christmas cards and personal letters as much as anyone, but with electronic payments and telecommunications taking more of the volume, it is increasingly becoming an advertising service. If it is operating unprofitably, we are paying a form of subscription fee to receive those ads.

This is actually one of the challenges of public services in the US today; many things, from mail delivery to bus and train service to road construction and vehicle registration, were once self-sufficient but haven't been for a long time. There's a lot of reasons for this, but one of the outcomes is that entities which used to take care of themselves now have to beg for a growing portion out of the general fund.

However, it's clear that the 1970s experiment to have it turn a profit again didn't work and likely never would have worked (it was, in many ways, set up for failure).

Because they weren't in one of the larger bases that had satellite internet. Combat troops in the wilds of Helmand might go weeks without seeing a fresh egg or a slice of bread. Satellite terminals circa 2002 were bulky, expensive bits of kit that just weren't that widely distributed, at least in the British armed forces.