You're technically correct when thinking of only the transfer of money, though that's not the whole story. Many here would call tax breaks to regular businesse

You're technically correct when thinking of only the transfer of money, though that's not the whole story. Many here would call tax breaks to regular businesses a tax subsidy to those businesses... after all, there are services those tax advantaged businesses are using that are being paid for by others. In this sense, there is a transfer of "something" from taxpayers to the business, it's just not hard "taxpayer dollars". However, we see that the USPS does get a lot of advantages that are effectively subsidized by others: http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/ http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/ There are real subsidies that the USPS gets that are funded by taxpayers, it simply that those are not paid in cash. So I think the person you were responding to has a completely valid point. They are not competing and doing business on the same terms as other businesses and squandering their cash is enabled because of the subsidies of other expenses that they don't have to bear directly.