Just heard on NPR that the first class rate for a Forever
stamp went up from 73 cents to 78 cents, effective today.
And yet the mail takes longer and longer to arrive at its destination. I only use it when I have absolutely no other choice. I hope someday it goes away completely, which is likely since they can’t figure out a way to make money, or at least break even. I don’t think many people will miss it.
Here are the rates for a 1 ounce first-class letter in the U.S. since July 1, 1885. The price has gone up from .01 dollars to .78 dollars since then. .02 dollars is now worth between .54 and .55 dollars when you take account of inflation. Given that letters now travel by airplane and not by train (or even slower transmission methods), a slight increase over time isn’t surprising. I haven’t noticed my mail traveling any slower. Do you have any evidence that it has slowed down?:
Talk to people in rural areas. Talk to people with fixed incomes. UPS, FedEx, etc. really don’t want to make a single delivery to a rural address. The beauty of the USPS is that, yes, they deliver pretty much everywhere. If and when the government decides to privatize mail delivery, you can count on a segment of the population getting screwed over by it, because it’s just not “cost-effective” to deliver to them.
The fact that you can still mail a letter for less than a dollar, or a parcel for about $10, and it’ll get there in a few days, is still pretty damned amazing.
Anecdotally: my parents live in a mid-sized city (Green Bay, WI). For the past couple of years, they have been having intermittent trouble with what you’d think would be dead-easy mail delivery: local letters sent to them from the other side of town (i.e., they live on the east side of the Fox River, and they are supposed to be getting mail from people and businesses on the west side of the river).
For example, in the past year, there have been two instances where a business on the West Side mails a check to my father (on the East Side), and it just doesn’t show up – at the same time that they mail that check to my dad, they also mail a check to my uncle, who lives on the West Side, and my uncle gets it in two days.
Apparently, this isn’t just them; intra-city mail routing and delivering there has been an issue for a while now.
For those who will want to answer: “But why doesn’t your father have them direct-deposit/Zelle/PayPal it to him?”: dad is 91, barely understands how to use his phone and laptop, does not do online banking, and is much more comfortable with a paper check that he can see and deposit himself.
That is some serious privilege talking
They can operate in the black. They know how. They just can’t because anti-service-minded pro-privatization GOP assholes are fucking with their financial posture with the intended endgame of destroying them. It’s getting better (and the price rises are part of this) but they’re not out of the woods.
More info.
Any Government service that has to jack up their prices every year and still loses money shouldn’t be around. If UPS, Fed Ex, and DHL can make money delivering things, why can’t USPS? Email has obviously reduced their letter volumes, but they should still be able to make money delivering packages, or at least break even. USPS should phase out letter delivery and focus on something they can do competitively. The days of hand-delivering letters to every American, and every American business, six days a week are long gone IMO.
And if you get the address wrong, they’ll fix it for free and let it continue on it’s way. UPS will charge you $23.50 to do that. Even something as simple as addressing it to 2350 N Delaware Ave instead of 2350 N Delaware Rd…they’ll fix it, but they’ll charge you $23.50 to do so. If a package isn’t deliverable USPS will send it back to you, for free. UPS will charge you $10 (I think) for that.
We should probably eliminate Medicare too. Insurance companies are profitable and if I don’t need it, fuck the poors who do.
UPS, Fed Ex and DHL won’t send something clear across the country for 78¢.
I have a UPS pickup at my store. The driver is there every single day and yet they use the post office to mail me the bill.
That’s just not remotely true.
As per post #3: it’s not a company, it’s a service. It doesn’t “lose money,” it costs money to operate, for the benefit of the country and its population.
Just as other businesses have to raise their prices over time, due to inflation, rising wages for their employees, etc., so does the USPS.
My understanding is that the USPS generally tries to raise postage rates in a way that they run at a surplus for a time (i.e., revenue from postage rates is higher than costs), then run even for a time, and then have a period where costs are higher than revenue. However, as noted by @Cervaise , GOP members in Congress keep trying to fuck with it, to built a case for getting rid of it.
Letters and similar non-parcel mail are something that the private sector (UPS, FedEx, etc.) either won’t do, or will charge orders of magnitude more to do, compared to the USPS. And, again, the private sector can and will refuse to deliver to certain addresses; today, they often rely on – guess who? – the USPS to make the final delivery of things.
But, no, you think the USPS is stupid and a waste, and should go away, and clearly aren’t interested in other POVs.
UPS, Fed Ex, and DHL raise their prices regularly. Does the amount match inflation in general? I don’t know. Look it up and tell us whether those companies are raising prices slower than inflation, as fast as inflation, or faster than inflation. I get some letters by USPS about 95% of the time for Monday through Saturday. So it’s not long gone. The fact that you don’t get letters regularly doesn’t mean that other people don’t.
And, the fact that he doesn’t get letters – and thinks that they are passe – doesn’t mean that regular mail delivery isn’t very important to other people.
I get a newspaper mail delivered 5 days a week, Its a day late. But, no one delivers it all the way out here.
There’s no paper boxes in my little village.
Sure, I could read it online, but I prefer the paper paper.
It never fails to show up. Unless…the mail carrier has a mechanical problem with her jeep. Has happened.
She has some rough terrain to travel over.
Yeah, I want my mail. I’ll pay .78 cents.
But I bought a roll of forever stamps a few years ago. I’ll die before I use them all. I’m grandfathered in. 
How often does something that was 13 cents when I was little, only increase the price about 65 cents in decades?
I do enjoy receiving mail and consider it worth the price.
.13 dollars in 1975 is equivalent after inflation to .78 dollars in 2075.
(Bolding mine)
This is where you’ve made your mistake. It’s a service, not a money-making venture. You know what else doesn’t pay for itself? My library, my police department, my fire department, my city snow plows, my schools, etc, etc, etc.
But, unlike all those other services, it was fully self-funded. That is, until the GOP mandated that they had to pre-fund their pension program decades into the future, they were doing just fine. What other organization has to do this? None.
I get my mail delivered every day, without fail, with only brief delays during Covid.
You have a really mistaken idea of what a government service is.