The Postal Service proudly proclaims just how big it is. It has 574,000 employees, making it the nation's second-largest civilian employer, after Wal-Mart. The service runs 215,625 vehicles, the world's largest civilian fleet. Those vehicles traverse 1.25 billion miles annually and consume 399 million gallons of fuel. Its carriers serve 151 million homes, businesses and post office boxes.

And the Postal Service can't resist a tacit little boast at the end of that long list of big numbers: It receives zero tax dollars for its efforts.

Bravo! But one could point out that this is the same Postal Service that posted multibillion-dollar deficits in the 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 fiscal years; another is expected to be reported for the 2011 fiscal year, which ended Friday. It is curious that 2006, the year before this dismal run of losses, happened to be the very year when total mail volume peaked. In 2006, some 213.1 billion pieces were processed. In 2010, the total was just 171 billion.

...The Internet can't be used to tele-transport packages, of course, and our use of package delivery services, including the Postal Service's, has grown with e-commerce. But the Postal Service is running large deficits, bumping up against the $15 billion limit it is permitted to borrow, and is on the brink of default unless Congress comes to the rescue...

Why does all of this sound so reasonable? The Postal Service is behind the times. It's overstaffed. It's no longer competitive. It's time for us to face the music and make some hard cuts. This has nothing to do with politics. It's about creative destruction. All of this sounds so reasonable because we are in the habit of applying the logic of creative destruction on workers and not on, say, CEO pay. When we apply this logic on CEO pay, we are suddenly politically motivated and unreasonable. But, as the great economist Ha-Joon Chang has pointed out, there is no economic justification for the kind of pay American CEOs receive. None. It's a big waste of money. Yet we are not seriously discussing any cuts in that considerable area of the economy, but we are seriously considering cuts in this area (the Postal Service) of the economy.