The next time you pay your Prime membership, you'll find out that it's gone up to $119.
The USPS has been using lock boxes for many decades, but they are permanently placed and not delivered by drone. The letter carrier puts your package in, locks the box, then puts the key in your regular mail box. The key has the box number on it. The key can't be removed when the box is opened... I can't remember how the post office keeps people from stealing the keys when the box is open... maybe the letter carrier has access to a master key that can be removed... heck, I only used such boxes early in my mail carrying career and I forget.
USPS financial woes have to do with an unreasonable burden placed on them by Congress... in order to prefund retiree health benefit copayments 75 years in advance, the USPS has to pay $5.6 billion per year in advance. The USPS has been doing so since 2002 and must continue do so until 2057. No other company, public or private, is saddled with this amount of prepayment. During years that the economy isn't doing so well, the burden is more onerous than in years where the economy is doing very well.
The Post Office has defaulted on this pre-funding requirement every year since 2010, but it's only a debt on paper... the money belongs to the Post Office in the first place, so there's no interest on the amount and the benefits are prefunded for quite a few years already.
