Pa Rock's Plan to Save the U.S. Postal Service

 

by Pa Rock

Man with a Plan

With the advent of "forever" stamps seventeen years ago, many people no longer have any idea how much money they spend to send a letter.  We used to know, when the price of first-class postage was printed right on the stamps that we would affix to our letters, but those days are long gone, and now we are forced to use a mail system whose rates are cloaked in government subterfuge.

In 1948 when I was born, the cost of mailing an ordinary first-class letter from any place in the United States to anyplace else in the United States was three cents.  Three damned pennies!  It had been that way since 1932 when it was raised from two cents for a first-class letter stamp, and the two-cent price had been in effect since 1885 - with a one-year exception during World War I when it had skyrocketed to three cents.

And it wasn't the occasion of my birth that started the out-of-control rise in the cost of postage.  I was several months past my tenth birthday when the price of a first-class stamp went to four cents, an event that caused a national howl that was almost as loud as the one five years after that when the mail service introduced zip codes.

I was getting ready to go into fifth grade when postage went to four cents, and I was in high school less than five years later when it was bumped to five cents.  Postage was kicked up to six cents per first-class letter while I was in college.  The cost of mailing an ordinary letter was eight cents when my oldest son was born in 1973, thirteen cents when my daughter was born in 1976, and fifteen cents when my youngest son arrived in 1979.  Postage was literally increasing faster than the size of my family!

And since then, of course, it has gotten even crazier.

Postage rose from fifteen cents to twenty-five cents during the 1980's, twenty-five cents to thirty-three cents in the 1990's, thirty-three cents to forty-four cents in the 2000's, and forty-four cents to fifty-five cents in the 2010's.  

The price of a first-class stamp did not rise again until August of 2021 when it went to fifty-eight cents.  Postage for an ordinary letter jumped to sixty cents in July of 2022, sixty-three cents in January of 2023,  and on to sixty-six cents less than six months after that in early July of 2023.

This year, 2024, the cost of mailing an ordinary letter went up two more cents in January to sixty-eight cents and the postal service has already announced plans to bump it another nickel in July.  In less than three months Americans will be paying seventy-three cents to mail a first-class letter, whether they realize it or not.

Party hearty, Louie!

The United States Postal Service struck gold on April 12th, 2007, when it launched the concept of "forever" stamps.  The price was removed from the stamps so consumers were often  unaware of how much they were spending to send individual letters, and instead the stamp, once printed and sold, was good "forever" even if the price of postage went up before it was used.  It was a short-term bargain and a long-term clandestine operation.  If the price of a stamp suddenly jumps a nickel, no one is the wiser unless they happen to notice  something in a newspaper or on-line - and then it isn't an immediate concern because they have a sheet of forever stamps in a drawer at home.

The rising cost of "forever" stamps is obviously a postal racket, but it could also be an income stream for wise investors because clearly the cost of postage stamps is rising faster than the interest rates that banks pay on savings' accounts.   People could conceivably buy "forever" stamps en masse, secure them someplace safe, and in a few years offload their stamps for a nice profit - if they could find a ready buyer.  The US Postal Service currently WILL NOT buy them back - I checked!)

But how about this for an option:

The government has already been talking about the notion of returning to some form of postal banking where people could do their general banking right at the post office.  What if the post office could be used for investing as well?  Instead of just selling stamps at the going "forever" rate,  What if Congress passed a law directing the post office to sell stamp stocks at the same rate, one stamp (or one hundred stamps) equals one share, and then have the post office buy those shares back at the new going rate whenever a stockholder wants to sell.  The post office could continue to make their revenue off of its stamp sales, and savvy investors could get in on the action as well while providing the postal service with another revenue stream for running its day-to-day operations.  Win, win!

In the end  '"Pa Rock's Plan to Save the Postal Service"  might even help to tamp down the exorbitant cost of postage - and that would certainly be an unexpected helping of gravy!