Comment by cma
2 days ago
I still want to know why we aren't heavily taxing junk mail instead of subsidizing. Or adding a national opt-out system. I do see the incentive problem for political junk mail, asking incumbents to vote against subsidizing that would be hard.
Junk mail is not subsidized per se. It does often cost less than non-marketing mail, but this is because it can take advantage of some discounts that lower volume senders have a harder time qualifying for.
In particular, you can get discounts for pre-sorting and bundling your mailings, formatting things in a way that is easier for USPS to automate, and for high volume.