Remember when those red Netflix DVD envelopes were everywhere? Digital streaming technology put an end to them, depriving the United States Postal Service of a source of revenue that was helping to make up for the rapid decline of first class postage in the Internet Age.
As John Oliver explains, in 2006 — the year I started this blog and was a 3-disc Netflix subscriber — a new law clobbered USPS finances and hobbled its ability to recover. Trump should be locked in a room with this video playing repeatedly, until he agrees to support the USPS. He doesn’t even have to admit he’s an idiot about everything, which he is, just the post office.
A point that John Oliver doesn’t make is that in many places, like where I live, Amazon deliveries are rarely made by regular mail anymore. Amazon has a large distribution center in a neighboring town with its own fleet of trucks. So in addition to the USPS not losing money on the Amazon deliveries it still makes, it isn’t making nearly as many as it was. Which gets back to one of Oliver’s points about service to rural areas, where many of Trump’s hardcore supporters live.