The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office and U.S. Mail, is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. The USPS traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, where Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general. The cabinet-level Post Office Department was created in 1792 from Franklin's operation and transformed into its current form in 1971 under the Postal Reorganization Act.

The USPS employs over 574,000 workers and operates over 218,000 vehicles.^[2] The USPS is the operator of the largest vehicle fleet in the world.^[4] The USPS is legally obligated to serve all Americans, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality. The USPS has exclusive access to letter boxes marked "U.S. Mail" and personal letterboxes in the United States, but still competes against private package delivery services, such as UPS and FedEx.

On December 5, 2011 the USPS announced it would close more than half of its mail processing centers, eliminate 28,000 jobs and end overnight delivery of first-class mail. This will close down 252 of its 461 processing centers. On December 13, 2011 the USPS agreed to delay the closing of 252 mail processing centers as well as 3,700 local post offices until mid-May 2012.^[5]

The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters. However, it does receive tens to hundreds of millions per year in "implicit subsidies", such as breaks on property tax, vehicle registration, and sales tax, in addition to subsidized government loans.^[6] Revenue in the 2000s has been dropping sharply due to declining mail volume,^[7] prompting the postal service to look to other sources of revenue while cutting costs to reduce its budget deficit.^[8]

History[link]

Running pony logo used by the U.S. Post Office Department before the creation of the USPS.

The first postal service in America arose in February 1692, when a grant from King William & Queen Mary empowered Thomas Neale "to erect, settle and establish within the chief parts of their majesties' colonies and plantations in America, an office or offices for the receiving and dispatching letters and pacquets, and to receive, send and deliver the same under such rates and sums of money as the planters shall agree to give, and to hold and enjoy the same for the term of twenty-one years."^[9]

The United States Post Office (USPO) was created in Philadelphia under Benjamin Franklin on Wednesday, July 26, 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress.^[1] Based on the Postal Clause in Article One of the United States Constitution, empowering Congress "To establish post offices and post roads", it became the Post Office Department (USPOD) in 1792. Until 1971, it was part of the Presidential cabinet and the Postmaster General was the last person in the United States presidential line of succession.

The Post Office Department was enlarged during the tenure of President Andrew Jackson. As the Post Office expanded, difficulties were experienced due to a lack of employees and transportation. The Post Office's employees at that time were still subject to the so-called "spoils" system, where faithful political supporters of the executive branch were appointed to positions in the post office and other government corporations as a reward for their patronage. These appointees rarely had prior experience in postal service and mail delivery. This system of political patronage was replaced in 1883, after passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act.^[10]

Ten years before waterways were declared post roads in 1823, the Post Office used steamboats to carry mail between post towns where no roads existed.^{[citation needed]} Once it became clear that the postal system in the United States needed to expand across the entire country, the use of the railroad to transport the mail was instituted in 1832, on one line in Pennsylvania.^[11] All railroads in the United States were designated as post routes, after passage of the Act of July 7, 1838. Mail service by railroad increased rapidly thereafter.^[12]

~ Benjamin Franklin ~ George Washington ~ The First U.S. Postage Stamps Issued 1847 The first stamp issues were authorized by an act of Congress and approved on March 3, 1847.^[13] The earliest known use of the Franklin 5c is July 7, 1847, while the earliest known use of the Washington 10c is July 2, 1847. Remaining in postal circulation for only a few years, these issues were declared invalid for Postage on July 1, 1851.^[14]

An Act of Congress provided for the issuance of stamps on March 3, 1847, and the Postmaster General immediately let a contract to the New York City engraving firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch, and Edson. The first stamp issue of the U.S. was offered for sale on July 1, 1847, in NYC, with Boston receiving stamps the following day and other cities thereafter. The 5 cent stamp paid for a letter weighing less than 1 oz (28 g) and travelling less than 300 miles, the 10 cent stamp for deliveries to locations greater than 300 miles, or twice the weight deliverable for the 5 cent stamp.

In 1847, the U.S. Mail Steamship Company acquired the contract to carry the U.S. mails from New York, with stops in New Orleans and Havana, to the Isthmus of Panama for delivery in California. The same year, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company had acquired the right to transport mail under contract from the United States Government from the Isthmus of Panama to California. In 1855, William Henry Aspinwall completed the Panama Railway, providing rail service across the Isthmus and cutting to three weeks the transport time for the mails, passengers and goods to California. This remained an important route until the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. Railroad companies greatly expanded mail transport service after 1862, and the Railway Mail Service was inaugurated in 1869.^[11]

Rail cars designed to sort and distribute mail while rolling were soon introduced.^[11] RMS employees sorted mail 'on the fly' during the journey, and became some of the most skilled workers in the postal service. An RMS sorter had to be able to separate the mail quickly into compartments based on its final destination, before the first destination arrived, and work at the rate of 600 pieces of mail an hour. They were tested regularly for speed and accuracy.^[15]

The advent of rural free delivery in the U.S. in 1896, and the inauguration of parcel post service in 1913 greatly increased the volume of mail shipped nationwide, and motivated the development of more efficient postal transportation systems.^[16]

20th century[link]

From January 1, 1911, until July 1, 1967, the United States Postal Service operated the United States Postal Savings System. An Act of Congress of June 25, 1910, established the Postal Savings System in designated Post Offices, effective January 1, 1911. The legislation aimed to get money out of hiding, attract the savings of immigrants accustomed to the postal savings system in their native countries, provide safe depositories for people who had lost confidence in banks, and furnish more convenient depositories for working people. The law establishing the system directed the Post Office Department to redeposit most of the money in the system in local banks, where it earned 2.5 percent interest.^[17]

The system paid 2 percent interest per year on deposits. The half percent difference in interest was intended to pay for the operation of the system. Certificates were issued to depositors as proof of their deposit. Depositors in the system were initially limited to hold a balance of $500, but this was raised to $1,000 in 1916 and to $2,500 in 1918. The initial minimum deposit was $1. In order to save smaller amounts for deposit, customers could purchase a 10-cent postal savings card and 10-cent postal savings stamps to fill it. The card could be used to open or add to an account when its value, together with any attached stamps, amounted to one or more dollars, or it could be redeemed for cash. At its peak in 1947, the system held almost $3.4 billion in deposits, with more than four million depositors using 8,141 postal units.^[17]

On August 12, 1918, the Post Office Department took over air mail service from the U.S. Army Air Service (USAAS). Assistant Postmaster General, Otto Praeger, appointed Benjamin B. Lipsner to head the civilian-operated Air Mail Service. One of Lipsner's first acts was to hire four pilots, each with at least 1,000 hours flying experience, paying them an average of $4,000 per year. The Post Office Department used mostly World War I military surplus de Havilland DH-4 aircraft.^[18]

During 1918, the Post Office hired an additional 36 pilots. In its first year of operation, the Post Office completed 1,208 airmail flights with 90 forced landings. Of those, 53 were due to weather and 37 to engine failure. By 1920, the Air Mail service had delivered 49 million letters.^[19] Domestic air mail became obsolete in 1975, and international air mail in 1995, when the USPS began transporting First-Class mail by air on a routine basis.

The Post Office was one of the first government departments to regulate obscene materials on a national basis. When the U.S. Congress passed the Comstock laws of 1873, it became illegal to send through the U.S. mail any material considered obscene or indecent, or which promoted abortion issues, contraception, or alcohol consumption.^[20]

The Postal Reorganization Act signed by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970, replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with the independent United States Postal Service. The Act took effect on July 1, 1971.

Current operations[link]

USPS service delivery truck.

The United States Postal Service employs some 574,000 workers, making it the third-largest civilian employer in the United States behind the federal government and Wal-Mart.^{[21][clarification needed][22]} In a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the Court noted: "Each day, according to the Government's submissions here, the United States Postal Service delivers some 660 million pieces of mail to as many as 142 million delivery points."^[23] As of 2011, the USPS operates 31,000 post offices and locations in the U.S., and delivers 177 billion pieces of mail annually.^[4]

The USPS operates the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world, with an estimated 218,684 vehicles, the majority of which are the easily identified Chevrolet/Grumman LLV (Long-Life Vehicle), and the newer Ford/Utilimaster FFV (Flex-Fuel Vehicle), originally also referred to as the "CRV" (Carrier Route Vehicle).^[4] For every penny increase in the national average price of gasoline, the USPS spends an extra $8 million per year to fuel its fleet.^[24]

The number of gallons of fuel used in 2009 was 444 million, at a cost of US$1.1 billion.^[4] The fleet is notable in that many of its vehicles are right-hand drive, an arrangement intended to give drivers the easiest access to roadside mailboxes. Some Rural Letter Carriers use personal vehicles. Standard postal-owned vehicles do not have license plates. These vehicles are identified by a seven digit number displayed on the front and rear.

A fleet of post office vehicles at the James Griffith Station in Spring Branch, Houston

The Department of Defense and the USPS jointly operate a postal system to deliver mail for the military; this is known as the Army Post Office (for Army and Air Force postal facilities) and the Fleet Post Office (for Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard postal facilities).

Five-year plans[link]

In October 2008, the Postal Service released Vision 2013,^[25] a five-year plan required by law starting in 1993.^[26] One planned improvement is the introduction of the Intelligent Mail Barcode, which will allow pieces of mail to be tracked through the delivery system, as competitors like UPS and FedEx currently do.

Budget[link]

Revenue decline[link]

Declining mail volume is a symptom of the weak national economy^{[citation needed]}, particularly related to the financial and housing industries, and to trends toward the use of electronic mail. First Class mail volume (which is protected by legal monopoly) peaked in 2001^[27] and has declined 29% from 1998 to 2008, due to the increasing use of email and the World Wide Web for correspondence and business transactions.^[28]

FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS) directly compete with USPS express mail and package delivery services, making nationwide deliveries of urgent letters and packages.

Lower volume means lower revenues to support the fixed commitment to deliver to every address once a day, six days a week. In response, the USPS has increased productivity each year from 2000 to 2007,^[29] through increased automation, route re-optimization, and facility consolidation.^[28] Despite these efforts, the organization saw an $8.5 billion budget shortfall in 2010,^[30] and was losing money at a rate of about $3 billion per quarter in 2011.^[31]

To cut costs, the U.S. Postal Service proposes to close as many as 3,700 small post offices and replacing some of them as 'village post offices' to offer the most basic mail services at lower costs inside such places as grocery stores and drugstores with signs — 'Village Post Office' — in the window since August 2011. The Postal Service will pay Mini-mart about $2,000 a year. One benefit of the new policy is service hours which are longer than the old post office.^[32] The closure of half of all mail processing centers in the first half of 2012 will result an overall slowing of delivery and the elimination of next-day delivery for First-Class mail.^[33]

Congressional role[link]

Of related significance is the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA), which obligates the USPS to prefund 75-years worth of future health care benefit payments to retirees within a ten-year time span — a requirement to which no other government organization is subject. Thus, in addition to the weak economy and the diversion of mail to electronic means, the mandates of PAEA have had a considerable impact on Postal Service finances. As a consequence, it has been charged that the US Postal Service budget crisis of 2011 is, in essence, an artificial one.^{[29][34][35][36]}

Congress also has the ability to affect the USPS budget by changing rates for postage.^[37]

Retirement funding[link]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is the main bureaucratic organization responsible for the human resources aspect of many federal agencies and their employees. The PAEA created the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit Fund (PSRHB) after congress removed the Postal Service contribution to the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). Most other employees that contribute to the CSRS have 7% deducted from their wages. The PAEA enabled the prefunding of health insurance for employees by stipulating that the USPS was to not to have a surplus and end the use of its savings to eliminate postal debt, which it had been instructed to do in the Postal Civil Service Retirement System Funding Reform Act of 2003^[38]. The weekly payment of 115 million was ceased on June 24th 2011 due to the USPS's debt of 8 billion and a retirement benefits surplus of 6.2 million^[39]. The next prefund payment scheduled to make is 5.6 billion due by September 30th, 2012 however the S. 1789 21st Century Postal Service Act of 2011 would end the payments altogether, while making cuts across the board like reducing the USPS delivery days from 6 to 5 ^[40].

Cuts[link]

There are those who believe that readjustments and closing "will be a mess", may not obtain projected savings, will cause severe dislocations, and will run afoul of obligations under various collective bargaining agreements.^[41]

USPS has already begun turning to 'village post offices,' local stores which it pays to offer skeleton Post Office services to their communities.^[42]

USPS is a well-known employer of veterans and minorities, who would be disproportionately affected by the cuts.^[43][36]

Governance and organization[link]

USPS headquarters at L'Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C.

The Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service sets policy, procedure, and postal rates for services rendered, and has a similar role to a corporate board of directors. Of the eleven members of the Board, nine are appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate (see 39 U.S.C. § 202). The nine appointed members then select the United States Postmaster General, who serves as the board's tenth member, and who oversees the day to day activities of the service as Chief Executive Officer (see 39 U.S.C. §§ 202–203). The ten-member board then nominates a Deputy Postmaster General, who acts as Chief Operating Officer, to the eleventh and last remaining open seat.

The USPS is often mistaken for a government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak) because it operates much like a business, but as noted above, it is legally defined as an "independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States", (39 U.S.C. § 201) as it is controlled by Presidential appointees and the Postmaster General. As a quasi-governmental agency, it has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail. Indeed, in 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the USPS was not a government-owned corporation, and therefore could not be sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act.^[44]

The U.S. Supreme Court has also upheld the USPS's statutory monopoly on access to letter boxes against a First Amendment freedom of speech challenge; it thus remains illegal in the U.S. for anyone, other than the employees and agents of the USPS, to deliver mailpieces to letter boxes marked "U.S. Mail."^[45]

The Postal Service also has a Mailers' Technical Advisory Committee and local Postal Customer Councils, which are advisory and primarily involve business customers.^[46]

Universal service obligation and monopoly status[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. See talk page for details. (November 2011)

Article I, section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution grants Congress the power to establish post offices and post roads, which has been interpreted as a de facto Congressional monopoly over the delivery of mail. Accordingly, no other system for delivering mail – public or private – can be established, absent Congress's consent.^{[citation needed]} Congress has delegated to the Postal Service the power to decide whether others may compete with it, and the Postal Service has allowed an exception to its monopoly for extremely urgent letters.^{[citation needed]}

The mission of the Postal Service is to provide the American public with trusted universal postal service at affordable prices. While not explicitly defined, the Postal Service's universal service obligation (USO) is broadly outlined in statute and includes multiple dimensions: geographic scope, range of products, access to services and facilities, delivery frequency, affordable and uniform pricing, service quality, and security of the mail. While other carriers may claim to voluntarily provide delivery on a broad basis, the Postal Service is the only carrier with a legal obligation to provide all the various aspects of universal service at affordable rates.^{[citation needed]}

Proponents of universal service principles claim that since any obligation must be matched by the financial capability to meet that obligation, the postal monopoly was put in place as a funding mechanism for the USO, and it has been in place for over a hundred years. It consists of two parts: the Private Express Statutes (PES) and the mailbox access rule. The PES refers to the Postal Service's monopoly on the delivery of letters, and the mailbox rule refers to the Postal Service's exclusive access to customer mailboxes.^{[citation needed]}

Proponents of universal service principles further claim that eliminating or reducing the PES or mailbox rule would have an impact on the ability of the Postal Service to provide affordable universal service. If, for example, the PES and the mailbox rule were to be eliminated, and the USO maintained, then either billions of dollars in tax revenues or some other source of funding would have to be found.^{[citation needed]}

Some proponents^{[by whom?]} of universal service principles suggest that private communications that are protected by the veil of government promote the exchange of free ideas and communications. This separates private communications from the ability of a private for-profit or non-profit organization to corrupt. Security for the individual is in this way protected by the United States Post Office, maintaining confidentiality and anonymity, as well as government employees being much less likely to be instructed by superiors to engage in nefarious spying.^{[citation needed]} It is seen by some^{[by whom?]} as a dangerous step to extract the universal service principle from the post office, as the untainted nature of private communications is preserved as assurance of the protection of individual freedom of privacy.

Critics of universal service principles include several professional economists advocating for the privatization of the mail delivery system, or at least a relaxation of the universal service model that currently exists.^[47] Rick Geddes argued in 2000:^[48]

• First, basic economics implies that rural customers are unlikely to be without service under competition; they would simply have to pay the true cost of delivery to them, which may or may not be lower than under monopoly.
• Second, basic notions of fairness imply that the cross-subsidy should be eliminated. To the extent that people make choices about where they live, they should assume the costs of that decision.
• Third, there is no reason why the government monopoly is necessary to ensure service to sparsely populated areas. The government could easily award competitive contracts to private firms for that service.
• Fourth, early concerns that rural residents of the United States would somehow become isolated without federally subsidized mail delivery today are simply unfounded. ... Once both sender and receiver have access to a computer, the marginal cost of sending an electronic message is close to zero.

However, as the recent notice of a termination of mail service to residents of the Frank Church—River of No Return Wilderness indicates, mail service has been contracted to private firms such as Arnold Aviation for many decades. KTVB-TV reported:^[49]

'"We cannot go out every week and pick up our mail....it's impossible", said Heinz Sippel. "Everyone gets their mail. Why can't we?" said Sue Anderson. Getting mail delivered, once a week, by airplane is not a luxury, it's a necessity for those who live in Idaho's vast wilderness – those along the Salmon and Selway rivers. It's a service that's been provided to them for more than half a century – mostly by Ray Arnold of Arnold Aviation.

The decision was reversed; U.S. Postmaster General John Potter indicated that acceptable service to back country customers could not be achieved in any other fashion than continuing an air mail contract with Arnold Aviation to deliver the mail."^[50]

The Postal Act of 2006 required the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) to submit a report to the President and Congress on universal postal service and the postal monopoly in December 2008. The report must include any recommended changes. The Postal Service report supports the requirement that the PRC is to consult with and solicit written comments from the Postal Service. In addition, the Government Accountability Office is required to evaluate broader business model issues by 2011.

On October 15, 2008, the Postal Service submitted a report^[51] to the PRC on its position related to the Universal Service Obligation (USO). It said no changes to the USO and restriction on mailbox access were necessary at this time, but increased regulatory flexibility was required to ensure affordable universal service in the future.

Obligations of the USO include uniform prices, quality of service, access to services, and six-day delivery to every part of the country. To assure financial support for these obligations, the postal monopoly provides the Postal Service the exclusive right to deliver letters and restricts mailbox access solely for mail. The report argued that eliminating or reducing either aspect of the monopoly "would have a devastating impact on the ability...to provide the affordable universal service that the country values so highly." Relaxing access to the mailbox would also pose security concerns, increase delivery costs, and hurt customer service, according to the Post Office. The report notes:

It is somewhat misleading to characterize the mailbox rule as a "monopoly," because the enforcement of 18 U.S.C. § 1725 leaves customers with ample alternative means of delivering their messages. Customers can deliver their messages either by paying postage, by placing messages on or under a door or a doormat, by using newspaper or non-postal boxes, by telephoning or emailing, by engaging in person-to-person delivery in public areas, by tacking or taping their notices on a door post, or by placing advertisements in local newspapers. These methods are comparable in efficacy to communication via the mailbox.

Most of these alternatives are not actually free in some communities. For example, in Chicagoland and many other major metros you must get a background check from Police and pay a daily fee for the right to solicit or post commercial messages on private property.

Regarding the monopoly on delivery of letters, the report notes that the monopoly is not complete, as there is an exception for letters where either the amount paid for private carriage of the letter equals at least six times the current rate for the first ounce of a single-piece First-Class Mail letter (also known as the “base rate” or “base tariff”) or the letter weighs at least 12.5 ounces.

The Postal Service said that the USO should continue to be broadly defined and there should be no changes to the postal monopoly. Any changes would have far-reaching effects on customers and the trillion dollar mailing industry. "A more rigidly defined USO would … ultimately harm the American public and businesses," according to the report, which cautions that any potential change must be studied carefully and the effects fully understood.

Competitors[link]

USPS Terminal Annex building in Los Angeles.

FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS) directly compete with USPS express mail and package delivery services, making nationwide deliveries of urgent letters and packages. Due to the postal monopoly, they are not allowed to deliver non-urgent letters and may not directly ship to U.S. Mail boxes at residential and commercial destinations. However both companies have transit agreements with the USPS in which an item can be dropped off with either FedEx or UPS who will then provide shipment up to the destination post office serving the intended recipient where it will be transferred for delivery to the U.S. Mail destination, including Post Office Box destinations.^[52][53] These services also deliver packages which are larger and heavier than USPS will accept. DHL Express was the third major competitor until February 2009, when it ceased domestic delivery operations in the United States.

A variety of other transportation companies in the United States move cargo around the country, but either have limited geographic scope for delivery points, or specialize in items too large to be mailed. Many of the thousands of courier companies focus on same-day delivery, for example, by bicycle messenger.

Alternative transmission methods[link]

The Post Office Department owned and operated the first public telegraph lines in the United States, starting in 1844 from Washington to Baltimore, and eventually extending to New York, Boston, Buffalo, and Philadelphia. In 1847 the telegraph system was privatized, except for a period during World War I, when it was used to accelerate the delivery of letters arriving at night.^[54]

Between 1942 and 1945 "V-Mail" (for "Victory Mail") service was available for military mail. Letters were converted into microfilm and reprinted near the destination, to save room on transport vehicles for military cargo.^[55]

From 1982 to 1985 Electronic Computer Originated Mail was accepted for bulk mailings. Text was transmitted electronically to one of 25 post offices nationwide. The Postal Service would print the mail and put it in special envelopes bearing a blue ECOM logo. Delivery was assured within 2 days.^[56]

Law enforcement agencies[link]

Postal Inspection Service[link]

The United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) is one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the U.S. Founded by Benjamin Franklin, its mission is to protect the Postal Service, its employees, and its customers from crime and protect the nation's mail system from criminal misuse.^[57]

Postal Inspectors enforce over 200 federal laws providing for the protection of mail in investigations of crimes that may adversely affect or fraudulently use the U.S. Mail, the postal system or postal employees.

The USPIS has the power to enforce the USPS monopoly by conducting search and seizure raids on entities they suspect of sending non-urgent mail through overnight delivery competitors. According to the American Enterprise Institute, a private conservative think tank, the USPIS raided Equifax offices in 1993 to ascertain if the mail they were sending through Federal Express was truly "extremely urgent." It was found that the mail was not, and Equifax was fined $30,000.^[58]

Lastly, the PIS oversees the activities of the Postal Police Force who patrol in and around selected high-risk postal facilities in major metropolitan areas in the United States and its territories.

Office of Inspector General[link]

The United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) was authorized by law in 1996. Prior to the 1996 legislation, the Postal Inspection Service performed the duties of the OIG. The Inspector General, who is independent of postal management, is appointed by and reports directly to the nine presidentially appointed, Senate–confirmed members of the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service.

The primary purpose of the OIG is to prevent, detect and report fraud, waste and program abuse, and promote efficiency in the operations of the Postal Service. The OIG has "oversight" responsibility for all activities of the Postal Inspection Service.

Elements of addressing and preparing domestic mail[link]

All mailable articles (e.g., letters, flats, machinable parcels, irregular parcels, etc.) shipped within the United States must comply with an array of standards published in the USPS Domestic Mail Manual (DMM).^[59] Before addressing the mailpiece, one must first comply with the various mailability standards relating to attributes of the actual mailpiece such as: minimum/maximum dimensions^[60] & weight, acceptable mailing containers, proper mailpiece sealing/closure, utilization of various markings, and restrictions relating to various hazardous (e.g., explosives, flammables, etc.) & restricted (e.g., cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, etc.) materials, as well as others articulated in § 601 of the DMM.^[61]

The USPS specifies the following key elements when preparing the face of a mailpiece:

1. Proper Placement: The Delivery Address should be left-justified and located roughly in the center of mailpiece's largest side. More precisely, on a letter-size piece, the recommended address placement is within the optical character reader (OCR) read area, which is a space on the address side of the mailpiece defined by these boundaries: Left – 1/2 inch (13 mm) from the left edge of the piece; Right – 1/2 inch (13 mm) from the right edge of the piece; Top – 2-3/4 inches (70 mm) from the bottom edge of the piece; Bottom – 5/8 inch (16 mm) from the bottom edge of the piece.^[62] Preferred placement of a return address is in the upper left portion of the mailpiece—on the side of the piece bearing postage.^[63] Finally, postage (e.g., stamps, meter imprints, information-based indicia [IBI], etc.) is to be affixed in the upper right corner of the address side of the mail cover. It should be noted that any stamp/indicia partly concealed or otherwise obscured by an overlapping stamp/indicia may not be counted as valid postage.^[64]
2. Delivery Address (party receiving mail): The mail piece must have the address of the intended recipient, visible and legible, only on the side of the mail piece bearing postage. Generally, the name of the addressee should be included above the address itself. A ZIP+4 code will facilitate delivery.^[65]
3. Return Address (party sending mail): A return address tells the USPS where the sender wants the mail returned if it is undeliverable. Usage of a return address is required for some postal services (including Priority Mail, Express Mail, Periodicals in envelopes or wrappers, Insured Mail, Registered Mail, and parcel services).^[66]
4. Postage Payment: All mailpieces must include appropriate valid postage. Postage payment may be in the form of stamps, stamped stationery, precanceled stamps, postage meter imprints & PC Postage products ("Postage Evidencing Systems"), or permit imprint (indicia).^[67] Members of the U.S. Congress, among others, have franking privileges, which require only a signature.

Domestic first-class mail costs 45¢ for envelopes (32¢ for post cards) and upwards, depending on the weight and dimensions of the letter and the class.

Undeliverable mails that cannot be readily returned, including those without return addresses, are treated as dead mails at a Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta, Georgia or Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Sticker promoting ZIP code use.

The formatting of the address is as follows

Line 1: Name of recipient

Line 2: Street address or P.O. Box

Line 3: City, State (ISO 3166-2:US code or APO/FPO code) and ZIP+4 code

Example

John Q. Public

789 UNIVERSAL DR

PORTLAND, OR 97086-1234

The USPS maintains a list of proper abbreviations.^[68]

The formatting of a return address is identical. Though some style manuals recommend using a comma between the city and state name when typesetting addresses in other contexts, for optimal automatic character recognition, the Post Office does not recommend this when addressing mail. The official recommendation is to use all upper case block letters with appropriate formats and abbreviations, and leave out all punctuation except for the hyphen in the ZIP+4 code. If the address is unusually formatted or illegible enough, it will require hand-processing, delaying that particular item. The USPS publishes the entirety of their postal addressing standards.^[69]

Customers can look up ZIP codes on usps.com, and purchase postage if they have an account.

Paying postage[link]

The actual postage can be paid via:^[70]

• Stamps purchased online, at a Post Office, from a stamp vending machine or "Automated Postal Center" which can also handle packages, or from a third party (such as a grocery store)
• Pre-cancelled stamps for bulk mailings^[71]
• Postal meter
• Prepaid envelope
• Shipping label purchased online and printed by the customer on standard paper (e.g. with Click-N-Ship, or via a third-party such as Paypal or Amazon shipping)

All unused U.S. postage stamps issued since 1861 are still valid as postage at their indicated value. Stamps with no value shown or denominated by a letter are also still valid, although the value depends upon the particular stamp. For some stamps issued without a printed value, the current value is the original value. But some stamps beginning in 1988 or earlier, including "Forever Stamps" that were issued beginning in April 2007, and all 1st class mail 1st ounce stamps beginning 2011-01-21, the value is the current value of a 1st class mail 1st ounce stamps. (The USPS calls these "Forever Stamps". The generic name is non-denominated postage.)

Forever stamps are sold at the first-class mail postage rate at the time of purchase, but will always be valid for first-class mail (1 oz and under), no matter how rates rise in the future.^[72][73] Britain has had a similar stamp since 1989. However, one of the tenets of the Universal Postal Union is having a single flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world, which is true for Britain (since 1995), but not the U.S. The cost of mailing a 1 oz (28 g) First-Class letter increased to 45 cents on January 22, 2012.

Postage meters[link]

A postage meter is a mechanical device used to create and apply physical evidence of postage (or franking) to mailed matter. Postage meters are regulated by a country's postal authority; for example, in the United States, the United States Postal Service specifies the rules for the creation, support, and use of postage meters. A postage meter imprints an amount of postage, functioning as a postage stamp, a cancellation and a dated postmark all in one. The meter stamp serves as proof of payment and eliminates the need for adhesive stamps.

PC postage[link]

In addition to using standard stamps, postage can now be printed in the form of an electronic stamp, or e-stamp, from a personal computer using a system called Information Based Indicia. This online PC Postage method relies upon application software on the customer's computer contacting a postal security device at the office of the postal service.^[74] Authorized providers of PC Postage are listed below (many others—such as Amazon—are secondary providers, which use one of the authorized providers to do the actual service):^[75]

• Click-N-Ship (USPS)
• eBay
• Endicia
• Pitney Bowes
• Stamps.com

Other electronic postage payment methods[link]

Electronic Verification System (eVS)^[76] is the Postal Service's integrated mail management technology that centralizes payment processing and electronic postage reports. Part of an evolving suite of USPS electronic payment services called PostalOne!,^[77] eVS allows mailers shipping large volumes of parcels through the Postal Service a way to circumvent use of hard-copy manifests, postage statements and drop-shipment verification forms. Instead, mailers can pay postage automatically through a centralized account and track payments online.

Beginning in August 2007, the Postal Service began requiring mailers shipping Parcel Select packages using a permit imprint to use eVS for manifesting their packages.

Stamp copyright and reproduction[link]

All U.S. postage stamps issued under the former United States Post Office Department and other postage items that were released before 1978 are not subject to copyright, but stamp designs since 1978 are copyrighted.^[78] Following the creation of the United States Postal Service, the United States Copyright Office in section 206.02(b) of the Compendium II: Copyright Office Practices holds that "Works of the U.S. Postal Service, as now constituted, are not considered U.S. Government works."^[79]

Here, the U.S. Copyright Office has clarified that works of the U.S. Postal Service, of the government of the District of Columbia, or of the government of Puerto Rico are not "works of the U.S. government" and thus are subject to copyright. Thus, the USPS holds copyright to such materials released since 1978 under Title 17 of the United States Code. Written permission is required for use of copyrighted postage stamp images, although under USPS rules, permission is "generally" not required for "educational use", "news reporting" or "philatelic advertising use," but users must cite USPS as the source of the image and include language such as "© United States Postal Service. All rights reserved."^[80]

Service level choices[link]

General domestic services[link]

Domestic postage includes Monday through Saturday delivery (excepting federal holidays) to any address, Post Office Box, or general delivery Post Office in the United States, or any U.S. military mail destination.

The Post Office will not deliver packages heavier than 70 pounds (32 kg) or if the length (the package's longest dimension) plus the girth (the measurement around the package at its largest point in the two shorter dimensions) is greater than 108 inches (270 cm) combined (130 inches [330 cm] for Parcel Post).^[81] Other carriers handle packages that exceed these limits.

Deliveries outside the contiguous United States may take longer than those listed below.

As of April 2011, domestic postage levels for low-volume mailers include:

• Express Mail – Overnight delivery guaranteed to most locations^[82]
  • Sunday and holiday delivery available for additional charge
  • $100 insurance included
  • Tracking included
  • Flat rate envelopes and boxes are available. Otherwise, pricing varies by weight and distance.
• Priority Mail – 2 or 3-day service (partially guaranteed-only if you use a specific tracking or confirmation of delivery service)^[82]
  • Flat rate envelopes and boxes (various sizes) are available. Otherwise, pricing varies by weight, size and distance.

There are Prepaid Priority Mail Envelopes available through the Postal Store at a cost of $5.15 per envelope. You must order at least 10 envelopes in order to order the Prepaid Priority Mail Envelopes.

• First-Class Mail
  • 1–3 day delivery (will soon be 2-3 day delivery due to USPS network changes) ^[82] in most cases for letters and small packages
  • Rate varies by size and weight, but not distance.
    • Postcards (5" x 3.5" x 0.007 to 6" x 4.25" x 0.016" [127 x 89 x 0.18 to 152 x 108 x 0.4 mm]): 32¢
    • Letters (up to 11.5" x 6.125" x 0.25", 3.5 oz [292 x 156 x 6.4 mm, 100 g]): 45¢ + 20¢ for each additional ounce
    • Large Envelope or Flat (up to 15" x 12" x 0.75", 13 oz [381 x 305 x 19 mm, 370 g]): 88¢ + 20¢ each additional ounce (28 g). Must be rectangular, uniformly thick, and not too rigid.
    • Package/Parcel (Up to 108 inches (270 cm) length plus girth, 13 ounces (370 g): $1.71 + 17¢ each additional ounce (28 g) over 3 ounces (84 g)
• Parcel Post
  • Slowest but cheapest service for packages too large or heavy for First Class – uses surface transport
  • 2-9-day service to contiguous U.S., 4–14 days internal to AK/HI/territories, 3–6 weeks between mainland and outlying areas (travels by ship)^[82]
  • Variable pricing by weight, size and distance
  • Free forwarding if recipient has filed change-of-address form, or return if the item is undeliverable
• Media Mail (formerly "Book Rate")
  • Books and recorded media only
  • No advertising
  • Pricing by weight only
  • Transit time similar to Parcel Post
  • Cheaper than Parcel Post but only due to increased restrictions on package contents
• Library Mail
  • Similar to Media Mail, but cheaper and restricted to academic institutions, public libraries, museums, etc.

Bulk mail[link]

Discounts are available for large volumes of mail. Depending on the postage level, certain conditions might be required or optional for an additional discount:

• Minimum number of pieces
• Weight limits
• Ability for the USPS to process by machine
• Addresses formatting standardized
• USPS-readable barcode
• Sorted by 3-digit ZIP code prefix, 5-digit ZIP code, ZIP+4, or 11-digit delivery point
• Delivered in trays, bundles, or pallets partitioned by destination
• Delivered directly to a regional Bulk Mail Center, destination SCF, or destination Post Office
• Certification of mailing list accuracy and freshness (e.g. correct ZIP codes, purging of stale addresses, processing of change-of-address notifications)

In addition to bulk discounts on Express, Priority, and First-Class Mail, the following postage levels are available for bulk mailers:

• Periodicals
• Standard Mail (A)
  • Automation
  • Enhanced Carrier Route
  • Regular
• Standard Mail (B)
  • Parcel Post
  • Bound Printed Matter – Cheaper than Media Mail, for advertising catalogs, phone books, etc. up to 15 lb^[83]
  • Special Standard Mail
  • Library Mail
  • Nonprofit

Add-on services[link]

A Long Life Vehicle seen in Guam.

Depending on the type of mail, additional services are available for an additional fee:^[84]

• Certificate of Mailing – Proof of the date a package was mailed.
• Delivery Confirmation – Provides proof of delivery to sorting facilities, local post office and destination, but no signature is required.
• Signature Confirmation – Delivery requires a signature, which is kept on file. The online tracking system displays the first initial and last name of the signatory.
• Return Receipt – Actively sends Signature Confirmation information back to the sender by postcard or emailed PDF (as opposed to merely putting this information into the online tracking system).
• Insurance against loss or damage, for the value of the goods mailed. Amount of coverage can be specified, up to $5000.
• Certified Mail – Provides proof of mailing, and a delivery record. Used for serving legal documents and for sending U.S. Government classified information, up to the "confidential" level.
• Restricted Delivery – Requires delivery to a specific person or their authorized agent, not just to a mailbox.
• Collect On Delivery (C.O.D.) – Allows merchants to offer customers an option to pay upon delivery, up to $1000. Includes insurance.
• Special Handling – For unusual items, like live animals.
• Registered Mail – Used for highly valuable or irreplaceable items, and classified information up to the "secret" level.^[85] Registered mail is transported separately from other mail, in locked containers. Tracking is included and insurance up to $25,000 is available.^[86]

Postal money orders[link]

Postal money orders provide a safe alternative to sending cash through the mail, and are available in any amount up to $1000. Like a bank check money orders are cashable only by the recipient. Unlike a personal bank check, they are prepaid and therefore cannot be returned because of insufficient funds.^[87] Money orders are a declining business for the USPS, as companies like PayPal, PaidByCash and others are offering electronic replacements.

From 1911 to 1967, the Postal Service also operated the United States Postal Savings System, not unlike a savings and loan association with the amount of the deposit limited.^[17]

International services[link]

In May 2007, the USPS restructured international service names to correspond with domestic shipping options. Formerly, USPS International services^[88] were categorized as Airmail (Letter Post), Economy (Surface) Parcel Post, Airmail Parcel Post, Global Priority, Global Express, and Global Express Guaranteed Mail. The former Airmail (Letter Post) is now First-Class Mail International,^[89][90] and includes small packages weighing up to four pounds (1.8 kg). Economy Parcel Post was discontinued for international service, while Airmail Parcel Post was replaced by Priority Mail International. Priority Mail International Flat-Rate packaging in various sizes was introduced, with the same conditions of service previously used for Global Priority. Global Express is now Express Mail International, while Global Express Guaranteed is unchanged. The international mailing classes with a tracking ability are Express, Express Guaranteed, and Priority (except that tracking is not available for Priority Mail International Flat Rate Envelopes or Priority Mail International Small Flat Rate Boxes).^[91]

One of the major changes in the new naming and services definitions is that USPS-supplied mailing boxes for Priority and Express mail are now allowed for international use. These services are offered to ship letters and packages to almost every country and territory on the globe. Ironically, the USPS provides much of this service by contracting with a private parcel service, FedEx.^[92]

On May 14, 2007, the USPS canceled all outgoing international surface mail (sometimes known as "sea mail") from the United States, citing increased costs and reduced demand due to competition from airmail services such as FedEx and UPS.^[93] The decision has been criticized by the Peace Corps and military personnel overseas, as well as independent booksellers and other small businesses who rely on international deliveries.

The USPS provides an M-bag^[94] service for international shipment of printed matter;^[95] previously surface M-bags existed, but with the 2007 elimination of surface mail, only airmail M-bags remain.^[96] The term "M-bag" is not expanded in USPS publications; M-bags are simply defined as "direct sacks of printed matter ... sent to a single foreign addressee at a single address";^[95] however, the term is sometimes referred to informally as "media bag", as the bag can also contain "discs, tapes, and cassettes", in addition to books, for which the usual umbrella term is "media"; some also refer to them as "mail bags".

Military mail is billed at domestic rates when being sent from the United States to a military outpost, and is free when sent by deployed military personnel. The overseas logistics are handled by the Military Postal Service Agency in the Department of Defense.^[97] Outside of forward areas and active operations, military mail First-Class takes 7–10 days, Priority 10–15 days, and Parcel Post about 24 days.^[82]

Airline and rail division[link]

The United States Postal Service does not directly own or operate any aircraft or trains. The mail and packages are flown on airlines with which the Postal Service has a contractual agreement. The contracts change periodically. Depending on the contract, aircraft may be painted with the USPS paint scheme.^{[citation needed]} Contract airlines have included: UPS, Emery Worldwide, Ryan International Airlines, FedEx Express, Rhoades Aviation, American Airlines, United Airlines, and Express One International. The Postal Service also contracts with Amtrak to carry some mail between certain cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis – Saint Paul.

The last air delivery route in the continental U.S., to residents in the Frank Church—River of No Return Wilderness, was scheduled to be ended in June 2009. The weekly bush plane route, contracted out to an air taxi company, had in its final year an annual cost of $46,000, or $2400/year per residence, over ten times the average cost of delivering mail to a residence in the United States.^[98] This decision has been reversed by the U.S. Postmaster General.^[99]

Sorting and delivery process[link]

Mail Flow through National Infrastructure

Processing of standard sized envelopes and cards is highly automated, including reading of handwritten addresses. Mail from individual customers and public postboxes is collected by mail carriers into plastic tubs. The tubs are taken to a Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC). There are approximately 275 such centers across the United States, which sort mail for a given region (typically a radius of around 200 miles) and connect with the national network for interregional mail.^[100]

At the P&DC, mail is emptied into hampers which are then automatically dumped into a Dual Pass Rough Cull System (DPRCS). As mail travels through the DPRCS, large items, such as packages and mail bundles, are removed from the stream. As the remaining mail enters the first machine for processing standard mail, the Advanced Facer-Canceler System (AFCS), pieces that passed through the DPRCS but do not conform to physical dimensions for processing in the AFCS (i.e. large envelopes or overstuffed standard envelopes) are automatically diverted from the stream. Mail removed from the DPRCS and AFCS is manually processed or sent to parcel sorting machines.

In contrast to the previous system, which merely canceled and postmarked the upper right corner of the envelope, thereby missing any stamps which were inappropriately placed, the Advanced Facer-Canceler System locates indicia (stamp or metered postage mark), regardless of the orientation of the mail as it enters the machine, and cancels it by applying a postmark. Detection of indicia enables the AFCS to determine the orientation of each mailpiece and sort it accordingly, rotating pieces as necessary so all mail is sorted right-side up and faced in the same direction in each output bin.

Mail is output by the machine into three categories: mail already affixed with a bar code and addressed (such as business reply envelopes and cards), mail with machine printed (typed) addresses, and mail with handwritten addresses. Additionally, machines with a recent Optical Character Recognition (OCR) upgrade have the capability to read the address information, including handwritten, and sort the mail based on local or outgoing ZIP codes.

Mail with typed addresses goes to a Multiline Optical Character Reader (MLOCR) which reads the ZIP Code and address information and prints the appropriate bar code onto the envelope. Mail (actually the scanned image of the mail) with handwritten addresses (and machine-printed ones that are not easily recognized) goes to the Remote Bar Coding System. It also corrects spelling errors and, where there is an error, omission, or conflict in the written address, identifies the most likely correct address.

When it has decided on a correct address, it prints the appropriate bar code onto the envelopes, similarly to the MLOCR system. RBCS also has facilities in place, called Remote Encoding Centers, that have humans look at images of mail pieces and enter the address data. The address data is associated with the image via an ID Tag, a fluorescent barcode printed by mail processing equipment on the back of mail pieces.

If a customer has filed a change of address card and his or her mail is detected in the mailstream with the old address, the mailpiece is sent to a machine that automatically connects to a Computerized Forwarding System database to determine the new address. If this address is found, the machine will paste a label over the former address with the current address. The mail is returned to the mailstream to forward to the new location.

Mail with addresses that cannot be resolved by the automated system are separated for human intervention. If a local postal worker can read the address, he or she manually sorts it out according to the ZIP code on the article. If the address cannot be read, mail is either returned to the sender (first-class mail with a valid return address) or is sent to the Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta, Georgia (formerly known as Dead Letter Offices, originated by Benjamin Franklin in the 1770s^{[citation needed]}) where it receives more intense scrutiny, including being opened to determine if any of the contents are a clue. If no valid address can be determined, the items are held for 90 days in case of inquiry by the customer; and if they are not claimed then they are either destroyed or auctioned off at the monthly Postal Service Unclaimed Parcel auction to raise money for the service.

Once the mail is bar coded, it is automatically sorted by a Delivery Bar Code System that reads the bar code and determines the destination of the mailpiece to postal stations.

Regional mail is trucked to the appropriate local post office or kept in the building for carrier routes served directly from the P&DC. Out-of-region mail is trucked to the airport and then flown, usually as baggage on commercial airlines, to the airport nearest the destination station. At the destination P&DC, mail is once again read by a DBCS which sorts the items into their local destinations, including grouping them by individual mail carrier.

At the carrier route level, 95% of letters arrive pre-sorted;^[100] the remaining mail must be sorted by hand. The Post Office is working to increase the percentage of automatically sorted mail, including a pilot program to sort "flats".^[101]

Types of postal facilities[link]

Historic main post office in Tomah, Wisconsin.

A typical post office station in the Spring Branch area of Houston, Texas

A combined Post Office, Customs House, and Federal Court House in Galveston, Texas.

Although its customer service centers are called post offices in regular speech, the USPS recognizes several types of postal facilities, including the following:

• A main post office (formerly known as a general post office) is the primary postal facility in a community.
• A station or post office station, a postal facility that is not the main post office, but that is within the corporate limits of the community.
• A branch or post office branch, a postal facility that is not the main post office and that is outside the corporate limits of the community.
• A classified unit, a station or branch operated by USPS employees in a facility owned or leased by the USPS.
• A contract postal unit (or CPU), a station or branch operated by a contractor, typically in a store or other place of business.^[102]
• A community post office (or CPO), a contract postal unit providing services in a small community in which other types of post office facilities have been discontinued.
• A finance unit, a station or branch that provides window services and accepts mail, but does not provide delivery.
• A processing and distribution center (P&DC, or processing and distribution facility, formerly known as a General Mail Facility), a central mail facility that processes and dispatches incoming and outgoing mail to and from a designated service area. (275 nationwide.)^[100]
• An international service center (ISC), an international mail processing facility. There are only five such USPS facilities in the United States, located in Chicago, New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco.^[103]
• A sectional center facility (SCF), a P&DC for a designated geographical area defined by one or more three-digit ZIP code prefixes.
• A network distribution center, formerly known as a bulk mail center (BMC), a central mail facility that processes bulk rate parcels as the hub in a hub and spoke network.
• An auxiliary sorting facility (ASF), a central mail facility that processes bulk rate parcels as spokes in a hub and spoke network.
• A remote encoding center (REC), a facility at which clerks receive images of problem mail pieces (those with hard-to-read addresses, etc.) via secure Internet-type feeds and manually type the addresses they can decipher, using a special encoding protocol. The mail pieces are then sprayed with the correct addresses or are sorted for further handling according to the instructions given via encoding. The total number of RECs is down from 55 in 1998 to just 5 centers in April 2009. In 2010, there will be just two remaining RECs open, in Salt Lake City, Utah and Wichita, Kansas. More closures will occur as computer software becomes more able to read most addresses, but a few centers are expected to remain open (see Evolutionary Network Development below).

A 24-hour Automated Postal Center kiosk inside the Webster, Texas Main Post Office.

• A village post office (VPO), a post office concept beginning in 2011, village post offices are an integral part of the USPS plan to close low volume post offices. Many of these will be replaced with village post offices that will fill the role of the post office within that zip code and be located in local business or government centers and operated by those entities as specified in the contract negotiated between the entity and USPS.^[104]

While common usage refers to all types of postal facilities as "substations", the USPS Glossary of Postal Terms does not define or even list that word.^[102] Post Offices often share facilities with other governmental organizations located within a city's central business district. In those locations, often Courthouses and Federal Buildings, the building is owned by the General Services Administration while the U.S. Postal Services operates as a tenant.^[105] There are approximately 36,000 post offices, stations, and branches in the USPS retail system.^[106] Temporary stations are also set up for applying pictorial cancellations.

Automated Postal Centers[link]

In 2004 the USPS began deploying Automated Postal Centers (APC).^[107] APCs are unattended kiosks that are capable of weighing, franking, and storing packages for later pickup as well as selling domestic and international postage stamps. Similarly, traditional vending machines are available at many post offices to purchase stamps, though these are being phased out in many areas.^[108] Due to increasing use of Internet services, as of June, 2009, no retail post office windows are open 24 hours; overnight services are limited to those provided by an Automated Postal Center.^[109]

Evolutionary Network Development (END) program[link]

In February 2006, the USPS announced that they plan to replace the nine existing facility-types with five processing facility-types:^[110]

• Regional Distribution Centers (RDCs), which will process all classes of parcels and bundles and serve as Surface Transfer Centers;
• Local Processing Centers (LPCs), which will process single-piece letters and flats and cancel mail;
• Destination Processing Centers (DPC), sort the mail for individual mail carriers;
• Airport Transfer Centers (ATCs), which will serve as transfer points only; and
• Remote Encoding Centers (RECs).

Over a period of years, these facilities are expected to replace Processing & Distribution Centers, Customer Service Facilities, Bulk Mail Centers, Logistic and Distribution Centers, annexes, the Hub and Spoke Program, Air Mail Centers, and International Service Centers.

The changes are a result of the declining volumes of single-piece first-class mail, population shifts, the increase in drop shipments by advertising mailers at destinating postal facilities, advancements in equipment and technology, redundancies in the existing network, and the need for operational flexibility.

Final delivery[link]

USPS contractor-driven semi-trailer truck seen near Mendota, California.

USPS Ford Windstar used for residential delivery in Olympia, Washington.

Delivery days[link]

Until 1912, mail was delivered seven days a week. As the postal service grew in popularity and usage in the 19th century, local religious leaders noticed a decline in Sunday-morning church attendance because of local post offices' doubling as gathering places. These leaders appealed to the government to intervene and close post offices on Sundays.^[111][112]

Because of this intervention by the government, U.S. Mail (with the exception of Express Mail)^[113] is not delivered on Sunday, except in a few towns in which the local religion has had an effect on the policy, such as Loma Linda, California, which has a significant Seventh-day Adventist population^[111] and where U.S. Mail is delivered Sunday through Friday, with the exception of observed federal holidays.

Saturday delivery was temporarily suspended in April 1957, because of lack of funds, but quickly restored.^[114][115] On January 28, 2009, Postmaster General John E. Potter testified before the Senate^[116] that, if the Postal Service could not readjust its payment toward the pre-funding of retiree health benefits, as mandated by the Postal Accountability & Enhancement Act of 2006,^[117] the USPS would be forced to consider cutting delivery to five days per week during June, July, and August.

H.R. 22, addressing this issue, passed the House of Representatives and Senate and was signed into law on September 30, 2009. However, PMG Potter has continued to unveil a plan to eliminate Saturday mail delivery. The universal service obligation^[118] and six day delivery are upheld by Congressional language within Appropriations legislation, so a reduction in service would require action from the House and Senate.^[119]

On June 10, 2009, the NRLCA was contacted for its input on the USPS's current study of the impact of five-day delivery along with developing an implementation plan for a five-day service plan. A team of postal service headquarters executives and staff has been given a time frame of sixty days to complete the study. The current concept examines the impact of five-day delivery with no business or collections on Saturday, with Post Offices with current Saturday hours remaining open.

Chairman José Serrano (D–NY), of the House Appropriations subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, which oversees language mandating six day service, said "While I understand the seriousness of the Postal Service's fiscal issues, I remain supportive of a six day delivery schedule. I will be in conversations in coming weeks with the senior postal leadership and the postal unions in an effort to avoid service cuts."

On Thursday, April 15, 2010, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing to examine the status of the Postal Service and recent reports on short and long term strategies for the financial viability and stability of the USPS entitled "Continuing to Deliver: An Examination of the Postal Service's Current Financial Crisis and its Future Viability." At which, PMG Potter testified that by the year 2020, the USPS cumulative losses could exceed $238 billion, and that mail volume could drop 15 percent from 2009.^[120]

Direct delivery vs. customer pickup[link]

Originally, mail was not delivered to homes and businesses, but to post offices. In 1863, "city delivery" began in urban areas with enough customers to make this economical. This required streets to be named, houses to be numbered, with sidewalks and lighting provided, and these street addresses to be added to envelopes.^[121] The number of routes served expanded over time. In 1891, the first experiments with Rural Free Delivery began in less densely populated areas.

To compensate for high mail volume and slow long-distance transportation which saw mail arrive at post offices throughout the day, deliveries were made multiple times a day. This ranged from twice for residential areas to up to seven times for the central business district of Brooklyn, New York.^[122] In the late 19th century, mail boxes were encouraged, saving carriers the time it took to deliver directly to the addressee in person; in the 1910s and 1920s, they were phased in as a requirement for service.^[121] In the 1940s, multiple daily deliveries began to be reduced, especially on Saturdays. By 1990, the last twice-daily deliveries in New York City were eliminated.

Today, mail is delivered once a day on-site to most private homes and businesses. The USPS still distinguishes between city delivery (where carriers generally walk and deliver to mailboxes hung on exterior walls or porches, or to commercial reception areas) and rural delivery (where carriers generally drive).^[123] With "curbside delivery", mailboxes are at the ends of driveways, on the nearest convenient road. "Central point delivery" is used in some locations, where several nearby residences share a "cluster" of individual mailboxes in a single housing.

Some customers choose to use post office boxes for an additional fee, for privacy or convenience. This provides a locked box at the post office to which mail is addressed and delivered (usually earlier in the day than home delivery). Customers in less densely populated areas where there is no city delivery and who do not qualify for rural delivery may receive mail only through post office boxes. High-volume business customers can also arrange for special pick-up.^[124][125]

Another option is the old-style general delivery, for people who have neither post office boxes nor street addresses. Mail is held at the post office until they present identification and pick it up.

Some customers receive free post office boxes if the USPS declines to provide door-to-door delivery to their location or a nearby box.^[126] People with medical problems can request door-to-door delivery.^[127] Homeless people are also eligible for post office boxes at the discretion of the local postmaster, or can use general delivery.^[128]

Special delivery[link]

From 1885 to 1997, a service called special delivery was available, which caused a separate delivery to the final location earlier in the day than the usual daily rounds.

Forwarding and holds[link]

Residential customers can fill out a form to forward mail to a new address, and can also send pre-printed forms to any of their frequent correspondents. They can also put their mail on "hold", for example, while on vacation. The Post Office will store mail during the hold, instead of letting it overflow in the mailbox. These services are not available to large buildings and customers of a commercial mail receiving agency,^[129] where mail is subsorted by non-Post Office employees into individual mailboxes.

Employment in the USPS[link]

The Postal Service is the nation's second-largest civilian employer.^[2] As of 2011^[update], it employed 574,000 personnel, divided into offices, processing centers, and actual post offices.^[2] The United States Postal Service is a Fortune 500 company.

Labor unions representing USPS employees include: The American Postal Workers Union (APWU), which represents postal clerks and maintenance, motor vehicle, mail equipment shops, material distribution centers, and operating services and facilities services employees, postal nurses, and IT and accounting ^[130]; the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), which represents city letter carriers; the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association (NRLCA), which represents rural letter carriers; and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU).

USPS employees are divided into three major crafts according to the work they engage in:

• Mail carriers, also referred to as mailmen or letter carriers, prepare and deliver mail and parcels. They are divided into two categories: City Letter Carriers, who are represented by the NALC, and Rural Letter Carriers, who are represented by the NRLCA. City carriers are paid hourly with the potential for overtime. City Carriers are also subject to "undertime" on a daily basis^{[citation needed]}. "Pivoting" is when a Carrier's assigned route will take less than 8 hours to complete. Management may "pivot" the Carrier to work on another route to fill that Carrier up to 8 hours. Pivoting is a tool postal management uses to redistribute and eliminate overtime costs, based on consultation with the Carrier about his/her estimated workload for the day and mail volume projections from the DOIS (Delivery Operations Information System) computer program. City Carrier routes are adjusted and/ or eliminated based on information (length, time, and overall workload) also controlled by this program, consultations with the Carrier assigned to the route, and a current PS Form 3999 (street observation by a Postal supervisor to determine accurate times spent on actual delivery of mail).
• Rural carriers are under a form of salary called "evaluated hours", usually with overtime built in to their pay. The evaluated hours are created by having all mail counted for a period of two or four weeks, and a formula used to create the set dollar amount they will be paid for each day worked until the next time the route is counted.
• Mail handlers and processors, prepare mail and parcels, by delivery route, for the mail carrier.
• Clerks, who directly handle customer needs and sort standard and bulk-rate mail. Data Conversion Operators, who encode address information at Remote Encoding Centers, are also members of the clerk craft.

Other non-managerial positions in the USPS include:

• Maintenance and custodians, who see to the overall operation and cleaning of mail sorting machines, work areas, public parking and general facility operations.
• Transitional employees (TEs), who are hired for terms of 360 days (with the option of appointment to another 360 day term after a 5 day break), are given the same hourly base pay as a Part Time Flexible carrier, but receive no benefits other than annual leave. Transitional employees may be released by the USPS upon completion of their 360 day term, lack of work, or for "just cause" and can be represented by the NALC.
• Career, Part Time Flexible and Transitional employees (Career, PTF & TE DCOs) at a remote encoding center are still under clerks category but under a different contract than a plant worker or mail carrier and, therefore, are also under a different union (APWU) than the above mentioned Career, TEs and PTFs. There are several differences between working as a carrier or plant worker VS. working at a REC. Even pay is different.

Though the USPS employs many individuals, as more Americans send information via email, fewer postal workers are needed to work dwindling amounts of mail. Post offices and mail facilities are constantly downsizing, replacing craft positions with new machines and consolidating mail routes through the MIARAP (Modified Interim Alternate Route Adjustment Process) agreement. A major round of job cuts, early retirements, and a construction freeze were announced on March 20, 2009.^[131]

Violence as "going postal"[link]

In the early 1990s, widely publicized workplace shootings by disgruntled employees at USPS facilities led to a postal regulation that prohibits the possession of firearms in all postal facilities. Due to media coverage, postal employees gained a reputation among the general public as more likely to be mentally ill. The USPS Commission on a Safe and Secure Workplace found that "Postal workers are only a third as likely as those in the national workforce to be victims of homicide at work."^[132]

This stereotype in turn has influenced American culture, as seen in the slang term "going postal" (see Patrick Sherrill for information on his August 20, 1986, rampage) and the computer game Postal. Also, in the opening sequence of Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, a yell of "Disgruntled postal workers" is heard, followed by the arrival of postal workers with machine guns. In an episode of Seinfeld, the character Newman, who is a mailman, explained in a dramatic monologue that postal workers "go crazy and kill everyone" because the mail never stops. In The Simpsons episode "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday," Nelson Muntz asks Postmaster Bill if he has "ever gone on a killing spree"; Bill replies, "The day of the disgruntled postman went out with the Macarena".

In fiction[link]

• In the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street, the identity of Kris Kringle (played by Edmund Gwenn) as the one and only "Santa Claus" was validated by a state court, based on the delivery of 21 bags of mail (famously carried into the courtroom) to the character in question. The contention was that it would have been illegal for the United States Post Office to deliver mail that was addressed to "Santa Claus" to the character "Kris Kringle" unless he was, in fact, the one and only Santa Claus. Judge Henry X. Harper (played by Gene Lockhart) ruled that since the US Government had demonstrated through the delivery of the bags of mail that Kris Kringle was Santa Claus, the State of New York did not have the authority to overrule that decision.
• In the TV series Seinfeld, Newman is an employee at the USPS, which is portrayed in the series as a powerful, nefarious organization. In The Junk Mail episode 161 he claims that ZIP codes are meaningless; that no mail carrier has successfully delivered more than 50% of their mail (a feat he compares to the 3-minute mile), and that several postal workers go on killing sprees because, as he puts it, "the mail never stops". In the same episode, Cosmo Kramer is abducted by Post Office security men for running an anti-mail campaign after he realizes the Postal Service has become obsolete.
• The TV series Cheers featured John Ratzenberger as Cliff Clavin, a USPS worker and a regular in the bar.
• The 1997 movie The Postman portrays the United States Postal Service and its returned services to revive the United States economy in a post-apocalyptic world.

See also[link]

	Government of the United States portal
	Philately portal

• United States postal abbreviations
• United States Postal Service creed
• USPS Post Office Box Lobby Recycling program

Unions of the U.S. Postal Service:

• American Postal Workers Union
• National Association of Letter Carriers
• National Postal Mail Handlers Union
• National Rural Letter Carriers' Association

History:

• Post Office Murals
• American Letter Mail Company
• History of United States postage rates
• Postage stamps and postal history of the United States of America

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Understanding the Private Express StatutesPDF (146 KB) USPS Publication 542 (June 1998)
• USPS Employee Uniform Program – feature article at Uniforms magazine, September 2007^{[dead link]}
• "Father of 3-cent Stamp" Spooner fought Post Office Account of Lysander Spooner's fight against USPS monopoly
• The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails by Lysander Spooner
• The Post Office and Private Mail Service 19th century American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker opposes USPS monopoly
• America's Post Office Challenges The Digital Age An argument in support of ending the government monopoly
• Time for the Mail Monopoly to Go
• Postal Service Privatization Dr. Edward L. Hudgins, of the Cato Institute, speaks to Appropriations Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government
• Postal Service Meeting Notices and Rule Changes from The Federal Register RSS Feed

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: United States Postal Service

• Official website (Mobile)
• USPS Priority Mail official website
• USPS Glossary of Postal Terms (Publication 32)PDF (519 KB)
• U.S. Postal Inspection Service official website
• USPS Office of the Inspector General official website
• Postal Regulatory Commission official website
• U.S. Postal Service Media Center
• US Postal Service Congressional Research Service Reports

United States of America
Flag Great Seal
Motto: In God We Trust  (official) E Pluribus Unum  (traditional) (Latin: Out of Many, One)
Anthem: "The Star-Spangled Banner"
Capital		Washington, D.C. 38°53′N 77°01′W / 38.883°N 77.017°W / 38.883; -77.017
Largest city		New York City
Official language(s)		None at federal level[a]
National language		English (de facto)[b]
Demonym		American
Government		Federal presidential constitutional republic
-	President	Barack Obama (D)
-	Vice President	Joe Biden (D)
-	Speaker of the House	John Boehner (R)
-	Chief Justice	John Roberts
Legislature		Congress
-	Upper house	Senate
-	Lower house	House of Representatives
Independence		from the Kingdom of Great Britain
-	Declared	July 4, 1776
-	Recognized	September 3, 1783
-	Current constitution	June 21, 1788
Area
-	Total	9,826,675 km2 [1][c](3rd/4th) 3,794,101 sq mi
-	Water (%)	6.76
Population
-	2012 estimate	313,802,000[2] (3rd)
-	Density	33.7/km2  87.4/sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$15.094 trillion[3] (1st)
-	Per capita	$48,386[3] (6th)
GDP (nominal)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$15.094 trillion[3] (1st)
-	Per capita	$48,386[3] (15th)
Gini (2007)		45.0[1] (39th)
HDI (2011)		0.910[4] (very high) (4th)
Currency		United States dollar ($) (USD)
Time zone		(UTC−5 to −10)
-	Summer (DST)	(UTC−4 to −10)
Date formats		m/d/yy (AD)
Drives on the		right
Internet TLD		.us .gov .mil .edu
Calling code		+1
^ a. English is the official language of at least 28 states—some sources give a higher figure, based on differing definitions of "official".[5] English and Hawaiian are both official languages in the state of Hawaii. ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language. ^ c. Whether the United States or China is larger is disputed. The figure given is from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook. Other sources give smaller figures. All authoritative calculations of the country's size include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia, not the territories. ^ d. The population estimate includes people whose usual residence is in the fifty states and the District of Columbia, including noncitizens. It does not include either those living in the territories, amounting to more than 4 million U.S. citizens (mostly in Puerto Rico), or U.S. citizens living outside the United States.

The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.^[6] The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity).^[3][7] Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.^[3]

Indigenous peoples descended from forebears who migrated from Asia have inhabited what is now the mainland United States for many thousands of years. This Native American population was greatly reduced by disease and warfare after European contact. The United States was founded by thirteen British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed their right to self-determination and their establishment of a cooperative union. The rebellious states defeated the British Empire in the American Revolution, the first successful colonial war of independence.^[8] The current United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a stronger central government. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791.

Through the 19th century, the United States displaced native tribes, acquired the Louisiana territory from France, Florida from Spain, part of the Oregon Country from the United Kingdom, Alta California and New Mexico from Mexico, and Alaska from Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over the expansion of the institution of slavery and states' rights provoked the Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, its national economy was the world's largest.^[9] The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. It emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower. The country accounts for 41% of global military spending,^[10] and is a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.^[11]

Etymology[link]

In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" after Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.^[12] The former British colonies first used the country's modern name in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America".^[13] On November 15, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'." The Franco-American treaties of 1778 used "United States of North America", but from July 11, 1778, "United States of America" was used on the country's bills of exchange, and it has been the official name ever since.^[14]

The short form "United States" is also standard. Other common forms include the "U.S.", the "USA", and "America". Colloquial names include the "U.S. of A." and, internationally, the "States". "Columbia", a once popular name for the United States, derives from Christopher Columbus; it appears in the name "District of Columbia".

The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an "American". Although "United States" is the official appositional term, "American" and "U.S." are more commonly used to refer to the country adjectivally ("American values", "U.S. forces"). "American" is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States.^[15]

The phrase "United States" was originally treated as plural—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. It became common to treat it as singular—e.g., "the United States is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United States".^[16]

Geography and environment[link]

The land area of the contiguous United States is approximately 1,900 million acres (7,700,000 km²). Alaska, separated from the contiguous United States by Canada, is the largest state at 365 million acres (1,480,000 km²). Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, has just over 4 million acres (16,000 km²).^[17] The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and just above or below China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and how the total size of the United States is measured: calculations range from 3,676,486 square miles (9,522,055 km²)^[18] to 3,717,813 square miles (9,629,091 km²)^[19] to 3,794,101 square miles (9,826,676 km²).^[1] Including only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.^[20]

The Bald Eagle, national bird of the United States since 1782

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua and Mojave. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast. At 20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley is the tallest peak in the country and in North America. Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.^[21]

The United States, with its large size and geographic variety, includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The southern tip of Florida is tropical, as is Hawaii. The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Much of the Western mountains are alpine. The climate is arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Extreme weather is not uncommon—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the country, mainly in the Midwest's Tornado Alley.^[22]

The U.S. ecology is considered "megadiverse": about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland.^[23] The United States is home to more than 400 mammal, 750 bird, and 500 reptile and amphibian species.^[24] About 91,000 insect species have been described.^[25] The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. There are fifty-eight national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas.^[26] Altogether, the government owns 28.8% of the country's land area.^[27] Most of this is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching; 2.4% is used for military purposes.^[27]

Political divisions[link]

The United States is a federal union of fifty states. The original thirteen states were the successors of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule. Early in the country's history, three new states were organized on territory separated from the claims of the existing states: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. Most of the other states have been carved from territories obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. One set of exceptions comprises Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii: each was an independent republic before joining the union. During the American Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959.^[28] The states do not have the right to secede from the union.

The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the two other areas considered integral parts of the country are the District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also possesses five major overseas territories: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific.^[29] Those born in the major territories (except for American Samoa) possess U.S. citizenship.^[30] American citizens residing in the territories have many of the same rights and responsibilities as citizens residing in the states; however, they are generally exempt from federal income tax, may not vote for president, and have only nonvoting representation in the U.S. Congress.^[31]

History[link]

Native American and European settlement[link]

The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are believed to have migrated from Asia, beginning between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago.^[32] Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After Europeans began settling the Americas, many millions of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported diseases such as smallpox.^[33]

The Mayflower transported Pilgrims to the New World in 1620, as depicted in William Halsall's The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor, 1882.

In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first contact with the indigenous people. On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida"—the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. Spanish settlements in the region were followed by ones in the present-day southwestern United States that drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North American interior, down to the Gulf of Mexico. The first successful English settlements were the Virginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain's American colonies.^[34] Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.

In 1674, the Dutch ceded their American territory to England; the province of New Netherland was renamed New York. Many new immigrants, especially to the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680.^[35] By the turn of the 18th century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor. With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism. All legalized the African slave trade. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonial population grew rapidly. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans (popularly known as "American Indians"), who were being displaced, those thirteen colonies had a population of 2.6 million in 1770, about one-third that of Britain; nearly one in five Americans were black slaves.^[36] Though subject to British taxation, the American colonials had no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.

Independence and expansion[link]

Declaration of Independence, by John Trumbull, 1817–18

Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 to 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights", the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak confederal government that operated until 1789.

After the British defeat by American forces assisted by the French and Spanish, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States and the states' sovereignty over American territory west to the Mississippi River. Those wishing to establish a strong federal government with powers of taxation organized a constitutional convention in 1787. The United States Constitution was ratified in 1788, and the new republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.

Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a clause in the Constitution protected the Atlantic slave trade only until 1808. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution". The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, made evangelicalism a force behind various social reform movements, including abolitionism.

Territorial acquisitions by date

Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size.^[37] The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that stripped the native peoples of their land. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, amid a period when the concept of Manifest Destiny was becoming popular.^[38] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest. The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration. New railways made relocation easier for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, or buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.

Civil War and industrialization[link]

Battle of Gettysburg, lithograph by Currier & Ives, ca. 1863

Tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments about the relationship between the state and federal governments, as well as violent conflicts over the spread of slavery into new states. Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860. Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession—which the federal government maintained was illegal—and formed the Confederate States of America. With the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,^[39] made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power.^[40] The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers.^[41]

Immigrants at Ellis Island, New York Harbor, 1902

After the war, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln radicalized Republican Reconstruction policies aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves. The resolution of the disputed 1876 presidential election by the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction; Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans. In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe hastened the country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, lasting until 1929, provided labor and transformed American culture. National infrastructure development spurred economic growth. The 1867 Alaska Purchase from Russia completed the country's mainland expansion. The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 was the last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the indigenous monarchy of the Pacific Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a coup led by American residents; the United States annexed the archipelago in 1898. Victory in the Spanish–American War the same year demonstrated that the United States was a world power and led to the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.^[42] The Philippines gained independence a half-century later; Puerto Rico and Guam remain U.S. territories.

World War I, Great Depression, and World War II[link]

An abandoned farm in South Dakota during the Dust Bowl, 1936

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Most Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many opposed intervention.^[43] In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, and the American Expeditionary Forces helped to turn the tide against the Central Powers. After the war, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations. The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on isolationism.^[44] In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy, including the establishment of the Social Security system.^[45] The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.

Soldiers of the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division landing in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944

The United States, effectively neutral during World War II's early stages after Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, began supplying materiel to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis powers as well as the internment of Japanese Americans by the thousands.^[46] Participation in the war spurred capital investment and industrial capacity. Among the major combatants, the United States was the only nation to become richer—indeed, far richer—instead of poorer because of the war.^[47] Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States and Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.^[48] The United States, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.^[49]

Cold War and protest politics[link]

Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech, 1963

The United States and the Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact, respectively. While they engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear arsenals, the two countries avoided direct military conflict. Resisting leftist land and income redistribution projects around the world, the United States often supported authoritarian governments. American troops fought Communist Chinese forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment.

The 1961 Soviet launch of the first manned spaceflight prompted President John F. Kennedy's call for the United States to be first to land "a man on the moon", achieved in 1969. Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, the United States experienced sustained economic expansion. A growing civil rights movement, symbolized and led by African Americans such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination. Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson.^[50][51] He also signed into law the Medicare and Medicaid programs.^[52] Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful Vietnam War. A widespread countercultural movement grew, fueled by opposition to the war, black nationalism, and the sexual revolution. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others led a new wave of feminism that sought political, social, and economic equality for women.

As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, to avoid being impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Jimmy Carter administration of the late 1970s was marked by stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 heralded a rightward shift in American politics, reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities. His second term in office brought both the Iran-Contra scandal and significant diplomatic progress with the Soviet Union. The subsequent Soviet collapse ended the Cold War.

Contemporary era[link]

The World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001

Under President George H. W. Bush, the United States took a lead role in the UN–sanctioned Gulf War. The longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the Bill Clinton administration and the dot-com bubble.^[53] A civil lawsuit and sex scandal led to Clinton's impeachment in 1998, but he remained in office. The 2000 presidential election, one of the closest in American history, was resolved by a U.S. Supreme Court decision—George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush, became president.

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly three thousand people. In response, the Bush administration launched the global War on Terror, invading Afghanistan and removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda training camps. Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerrilla war. In 2002, the Bush administration began to press for regime change in Iraq on controversial grounds.^[54] Forces led by the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, ousting Saddam Hussein. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused severe destruction along much of the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans. In 2008, amid a global economic recession, the first African American president, Barack Obama, was elected. Major health care and financial system reforms were enacted two years later. In 2011, a raid by Navy SEALs in Pakistan killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The Iraq War ended with the pullout of the remaining U.S. troops from the country.

Government and politics[link]

The west front of the United States Capitol, which houses the U.S. Congress

The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic and representative democracy, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law".^[55] The government is regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the U.S. Constitution, which serves as the country's supreme legal document.^[56] In the American federalist system, citizens are usually subject to three levels of government, federal, state, and local; the local government's duties are commonly split between county and municipal governments. In almost all cases, executive and legislative officials are elected by a plurality vote of citizens by district. There is no proportional representation at the federal level, and it is very rare at lower levels.

The south façade of the White House, home and workplace of the U.S. president

The federal government is composed of three branches:

• Legislative: The bicameral Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives, makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has the power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government.
• Executive: The president is the commander-in-chief of the military, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the members of the Cabinet (subject to Senate approval) and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.
• Judicial: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the president with Senate approval, interpret laws and overturn those they find unconstitutional.

The west front of the United States Supreme Court Building

The House of Representatives has 435 voting members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population every tenth year. As of the 2000 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, has fifty-three. The Senate has 100 members with each state having two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every other year. The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The president is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned to the states and the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.

The state governments are structured in roughly similar fashion; Nebraska uniquely has a unicameral legislature. The governor (chief executive) of each state is directly elected. Some state judges and cabinet officers are appointed by the governors of the respective states, while others are elected by popular vote.

The original text of the Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states. Article One protects the right to the "great writ" of habeas corpus, and Article Three guarantees the right to a jury trial in all criminal cases. Amendments to the Constitution require the approval of three-fourths of the states. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans' individual rights. All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review and any law ruled in violation of the Constitution is voided. The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was declared by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Parties and ideology[link]

Barack Obama taking the presidential oath of office from U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, January 20, 2009

The United States has operated under a two-party system for most of its history.^[57] For elective offices at most levels, state-administered primary elections choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the major parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824, and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote.

Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered center-right or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered center-left or liberal. The states of the Northeast and West Coast and some of the Great Lakes states, known as "blue states", are relatively liberal. The "red states" of the South and parts of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains are relatively conservative.

The winner of the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama, is the 44th U.S. president. The 2010 midterm elections saw the Republican Party take control of the House and make gains in the Senate, where the Democrats retain the majority. In the 112th United States Congress, the Senate comprises 51 Democrats, two independents who caucus with the Democrats, and 47 Republicans; the House comprises 242 Republicans and 192 Democrats—one seat is vacant. There are 29 Republican and 20 Democratic state governors, as well as one independent.

Foreign relations and military[link]

British Foreign Secretary William Hague and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, May 2010

The United States exercises global economic, political, and military influence. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and New York City hosts the United Nations Headquarters. It is a member of the G8,^[58] G20, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many have consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions. However, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States.

The United States has a "special relationship" with the United Kingdom^[59] and strong ties with Canada,^[60] Australia,^[61] New Zealand,^[62] the Philippines,^[63] Japan,^[64] South Korea,^[65] Israel,^[66] and several European countries. It works closely with fellow NATO members on military and security issues and with its neighbors through the Organization of American States and free trade agreements such as the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In 2008, the United States spent a net $25.4 billion on official development assistance, the most in the world. As a share of America's large gross national income (GNI), however, the U.S. contribution of 0.18% ranked last among twenty-two donor states. By contrast, private overseas giving by Americans is relatively generous.^[67]

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier

The president holds the title of commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States Department of Defense administers the armed forces, including the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. The Coast Guard is run by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and the Department of the Navy in time of war. In 2008, the armed forces had 1.4 million personnel on active duty. The Reserves and National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million. The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including contractors.^[68]

Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System.^[69] American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of transport aircraft, the Navy's eleven active aircraft carriers, and Marine Expeditionary Units at sea with the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. The military operates 865 bases and facilities abroad,^[70] and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.^[71] The extent of this global military presence has prompted some scholars to describe the United States as maintaining an "empire of bases".^[72]

Total U.S. military spending in 2010, almost $700 billion, was 43% of global military spending and greater than the next fourteen largest national military expenditures combined. At 4.8% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top fifteen military spenders, after Saudi Arabia.^[73] The proposed base Department of Defense budget for 2012, $553 billion, is a 4.2% increase over 2011; an additional $118 billion is proposed for the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.^[74] The last American troops serving in Iraq departed in December 2011;^[75] 4,484 servicemen were killed during the Iraq War.^[76] Approximately 90,000 U.S. troops were serving in Afghanistan as of April 2012;^[77] as of April 4, 1,924 had been killed during the War in Afghanistan.^[78]

Economy[link]

The United States has a capitalist mixed economy, which is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity.^[85] According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. GDP of $15.1 trillion constitutes 22% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 19% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity (PPP).^[3] Though larger than any other nation's, its national GDP is about 5% smaller than the GDP of the European Union at PPP in 2008. The country ranks ninth in the world in nominal GDP per capita and sixth in GDP per capita at PPP.^[3] The U.S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency.^[86]

The United States is the largest importer of goods and third largest exporter, though exports per capita are relatively low. In 2010, the total U.S. trade deficit was $635 billion.^[87] Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners.^[88] In 2010, oil was the largest import commodity, while transportation equipment was the country's largest export.^[87] China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. public debt.^[89]

Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest bourse by dollar volume^[90]

In 2009, the private sector was estimated to constitute 86.4% of the economy, with federal government activity accounting for 4.3% and state and local government activity (including federal transfers) the remaining 9.3%.^[91] While its economy has reached a postindustrial level of development and its service sector constitutes 67.8% of GDP, the United States remains an industrial power.^[92] The leading business field by gross business receipts is wholesale and retail trade; by net income it is manufacturing.^[93] Chemical products are the leading manufacturing field.^[94] The United States is the third largest producer of oil in the world, as well as its largest importer.^[95] It is the world's number one producer of electrical and nuclear energy, as well as liquid natural gas, sulfur, phosphates, and salt. While agriculture accounts for just under 1% of GDP,^[92] the United States is the world's top producer of corn^[96] and soybeans.^[97] Coca-Cola and McDonald's are the two most recognized brands in the world.^[98]

In August 2010, the American labor force comprised 154.1 million people. With 21.2 million people, government is the leading field of employment. The largest private employment sector is health care and social assistance, with 16.4 million people. About 12% of workers are unionized, compared to 30% in Western Europe.^[99] The World Bank ranks the United States first in the ease of hiring and firing workers.^[100] In 2009, the United States had the third highest labor productivity per person in the world, behind Luxembourg and Norway. It was fourth in productivity per hour, behind those two countries and the Netherlands.^[101] Compared to Europe, U.S. property and corporate income tax rates are generally higher, while labor and, particularly, consumption tax rates are lower.^[102]

Income and human development[link]

According to the United States Census Bureau, the pretax median household income in 2010 was $49,445. The median ranged from $64,308 among Asian American households to $32,068 among African American households.^[82] Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, the overall median is similar to the most affluent cluster of developed nations. After declining sharply during the middle of the 20th century, poverty rates have plateaued since the early 1970s, with 11–15% of Americans below the poverty line every year, and 58.5% spending at least one year in poverty between the ages of 25 and 75.^[103][104] In 2010, 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty, a figure that rose for the fourth year in a row.^[82]

A middle-class suburban development in San Jose, California, part of the San Francisco Bay Area.

The U.S. welfare state is one of the least extensive in the developed world, reducing both relative poverty and absolute poverty by considerably less than the mean for rich nations,^[105][106] though combined private and public social expenditures per capita are relatively high.^[107] While the American welfare state effectively reduces poverty among the elderly,^[108] it provides relatively little assistance to the young.^[109] A 2007 UNICEF study of children's well-being in twenty-one industrialized nations ranked the United States next to last.^[110]

Between 1947 and 1979, real median income rose by over 80% for all classes, with the incomes of poor Americans rising faster than those of the rich.^[111] However, income gains since then have been slower, less widely shared, and accompanied by increased economic insecurity.^[111][112] Median household income has increased for all classes since 1980,^[113] largely owing to more dual-earner households, the closing of the gender pay gap, and longer work hours, but the growth has been strongly tilted toward the very top.^{[105][111][114]} Consequently, the share of income of the top 1%—21.8% of total reported income in 2005—has more than doubled since 1980,^[115] leaving the United States with the greatest income inequality among developed nations.^[105][116] The United States has a progressive tax system which equates to higher income earners paying a larger percentage of their income in taxes.^[117] The top 1% pays 27.6% of all federal taxes, while the top 10% pays 54.7%.^[118] Wealth, like income and taxes, is highly concentrated: The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the country's household wealth, the second-highest share among developed nations.^[119] The top 1% possesses 33.4% of net wealth.^[120] In 2011 the United Nations Development Programme ranked the United States 23rd among 139 countries on its inequality-adjusted human development index (IHDI), nineteen places lower than in the standard HDI.^[121]

Infrastructure[link]

Science and technology[link]

A photograph from Apollo 11 of Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the Moon

The United States has been a leader in scientific research and technological innovation since the late 19th century. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's laboratory developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera. Nikola Tesla pioneered alternating current, the AC motor, and radio. In the early 20th century, the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford popularized the assembly line. The Wright brothers, in 1903, made the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight.^[122]

The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led many European scientists, including Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. The Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and computers. IBM, Apple Computer, and Microsoft refined and popularized the personal computer. The United States largely developed the ARPANET and its successor, the Internet. Today, 64% of research and development funding comes from the private sector.^[123] The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor.^[124] As of April 2010, 68% of American households had broadband Internet service.^[125] The country is the primary developer and grower of genetically modified food, representing half of the world's biotech crops.^[126]

Transportation[link]

The Interstate Highway System, which extends 46,876 miles (75,440 km)^[127]

Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles, which operate on a network of 13 million roads,^[128] including one of the world's longest highway systems.^[129] The world's second largest automobile market,^[130] the United States has the highest rate of per-capita vehicle ownership in the world, with 765 vehicles per 1,000 Americans.^[131] About 40% of personal vehicles are vans, SUVs, or light trucks.^[132] The average American adult (accounting for all drivers and nondrivers) spends 55 minutes driving every day, traveling 29 miles (47 km).^[133]

Mass transit accounts for 9% of total U.S. work trips,^[134] ranking last in a survey of 17 countries.^[135] While transport of goods by rail is extensive, relatively few people use rail to travel,^[136] though ridership on Amtrak, the national intercity passenger rail system, grew by almost 37% between 2000 and 2010.^[137] Light rail development has increased in recent years but, like high speed rail, is below European levels.^[138] Bicycle usage for work commutes is minimal.^[139]

The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978, while most major airports are publicly owned. The three largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are U.S.-based; Delta Air Lines is number one.^[140] Of the world's thirty busiest passenger airports, sixteen are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.^[141]

Energy[link]

The United States energy market is 29,000 terawatt hours per year. Energy consumption per capita is 7.8 tons of oil equivalent per year, the 10th highest rate in the world. In 2005, 40% of this energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by nuclear power and renewable energy sources.^[142] The United States is the world's largest consumer of petroleum.^[143] For decades, nuclear power has played a limited role relative to many other developed countries, in part due to public perception in the wake of a 1979 accident. In 2007, several applications for new nuclear plants were filed.^[144] The United States has 27% of global coal reserves.^[145]

Education[link]

Some 80% of U.S. college students attend public universities such as the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson.^[146]

American public education is operated by state and local governments, regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. Children are required in most states to attend school from the age of six or seven (generally, kindergarten or first grade) until they turn eighteen (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at sixteen or seventeen.^[147] About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. Just over 2% of children are homeschooled.^[148]

The United States has many competitive private and public institutions of higher education. According to prominent international rankings, 13 or 15 American colleges and universities are ranked among the top 20 in the world.^[149][150] There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition. Of Americans twenty-five and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees.^[151] The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.^[1][152] The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 0.97, tying it for 12th in the world.^[153]

Health[link]

The Texas Medical Center in Houston, the world's largest medical center^[154]

The United States life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth ranks it 50th among 221 nations.^[155] Increasing obesity in the United States and health improvements elsewhere have contributed to lowering the country's rank in life expectancy from 1987, when it was 11th in the world.^[156] Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight;^[157] the obesity rate, the highest in the industrialized world, has more than doubled in the last quarter-century.^[158] Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by health care professionals.^[159] The infant mortality rate of 6.06 per thousand places the United States 176th out of 222 countries, higher than all of Western Europe.^[160]

The U.S. health care system far outspends any other nation's, measured in both per capita spending and percentage of GDP.^[161] The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. health care system in 2000 as first in responsiveness, but 37th in overall performance.

Health care coverage in the United States is a combination of public and private efforts, and is not universal as in all other developed countries. In 2004, private insurance paid for 36% of personal health expenditures, private out-of-pocket payments covered 15%, and federal, state, and local governments paid for 44%.^[162] In 2005, 46.6 million Americans, 15.9% of the population, were uninsured, 5.4 million more than in 2001. The main cause of this rise is the drop in the number of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance.^[163] The subject of uninsured and underinsured Americans is a major political issue.^[164] A 2009 study estimated that lack of insurance is associated with nearly 45,000 deaths a year.^[165] In 2006, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate universal health insurance.^[166] Federal legislation passed in early 2010 will create a near-universal health insurance system around the country by 2014.

Crime and law enforcement[link]

Law enforcement in the U.S. is maintained primarily by local police departments. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is the largest in the country.^[167]

Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police and sheriff's departments, with state police providing broader services. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties. At the federal level and in almost every state, jurisprudence operates on a common law system. State courts conduct most criminal trials; federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as certain appeals from the state systems. Federal law prohibits a variety of drugs, although states sometimes pass laws in conflict with federal regulations. The smoking age is generally 18, and the drinking age is generally 21.

Among developed nations, the United States has above-average levels of violent crime and particularly high levels of gun violence and homicide.^[168] There were 5.0 murders per 100,000 persons in 2009, 10.4% fewer than in 2000.^[169] Gun ownership rights are the subject of contentious political debate.

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate^[170] and total prison population^[171] in the world. At the start of 2008, more than 2.3 million people were incarcerated, more than one in every 100 adults.^[172] The current rate is about seven times the 1980 figure,^[173] and over three times the figure in Poland, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country with the next highest rate.^[174] African American males are jailed at about six times the rate of white males and three times the rate of Hispanic males.^[170] The country's high rate of incarceration is largely due to sentencing and drug policies.^[170][175]