Does anyone actually use U.S. mail today? 

I think I have one monthly bill left that I pay with US Mail service (my HOA monthly fee). Everything else is wired up and processed digitally, giving me hundreds of dollars in rewards every year because I run it all on a rewards credit card and then pay it off. The only reason the HOA bill isn't included is because they only gave me the option to connect to my bank account - er... yah no. An HOA or any other company with a direct tap into a personal bank account is never a good idea.

That said, as I walked down my annual homeowner report form and payment to the mail box, it started me wondering, just how much mail is there anymore? The bulk of communication via email and similar really started ramping up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. That was about the time that bank accounts started being accessible online, and everything else followed suit soon after. 

These days, the only things I get in the mail are advert mail from colleges trying to recruit my kid, various Tuesday junk mail crap from local grocery stores and similar, and government stuff. I have noticed, however, when I order small stuff from Amazon, it tend to be hit and miss; sometimes an Amazon driver brings it to my door, and sometimes they use the US mail for delivery. Makes more sense with the mail for small stuff that can be easily stolen, but whatever algorithm Amazon is using, I can't predict it from one order to the next. And with all the porch pirates in my area, I just have it all sent to the local Amazon locker anyways. 

So, that just leaves the catch-all category of everything else, which is a about 99 percent communications I get from people or companies I have no idea about or have no interest in, and in the circular recycle trash file it goes. In fact, most times the blue bin is on the side of my house, so the stuff literally never makes it inside.

Elections are probably the worst. The amount of money spent on election mailers is insane, and hardly effective at all. But, since politicians are using someone else's donated campaign money, what do the care? As long as someone also paid tons in consulting fees tells them it gained them 0.001 percent more in potential voting territory, spend spend spend! According to one measurement, some $23.6 billion was spent on the 2020 federal elections combined. How much of that was spent on mailers is a bit fuzzy as communications gets categorized in a multiple ways (for instance, one category has digital or TV communications combined, then there are independent communications, and then there are straight communications. Go figure). In that smorgasbord, there is easily a couple dozen thousands of dollars on mailers that end up in mailboxes and straight to recycle bins too. That doesn't include what various other groups put out for their favorite candidates as well.

OpenSecret.org was able to dig a bit further, but their figures are dated from the 2012 Elections. According to their site, some $26 million was sent in mailers just for one presidential election. The number seems small today, but I'm sure most cities and non-profits could find a better use for those funds than printing glossing paper that goes through the mail to recycle bins at rate of 99.999 percent of volume sent. 

Elections aside though, I think the US mail is clearly going the way of the horse-drawn wagon. It's now more of a novelty then a function. Lawyers have always been the canary in the coal mine, and when they start sending out class action notices by email versus US mail, it's the beginning of the end (received more of those for the first time digitally in 2023 than paper now). 

I'm curious if there will be any mail at all by 2034. I suspect the government will still keep it going, but 9 out of 10 of us probably will see and read everything on phone, not even remembering an envelope, much less an updated yellow pages phonebook left on the doorstep every January.