Nickle First Class Postage Increase Proposed For This Year; Would Be Second Raise This Year

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...fe6e8&ei=148 :


Stamp prices to rise by record amount - as cost of sending a letter or card increases for SECOND time in a year.

That hurts, but honestly I don't think anyone would care or notice really considering 99.99% of the population uses forever stamps. Most people seem surprised to learn a stamp only costs $.68 at the counter. Just raise it to a dollar and keep it there they need to stop beating around the bush. (This message has been sponsored by the thousands of dollars in forever stamps I have sitting in my closet

Edit: also, very stinky of the post office to increase Money order costs. Targeting those without bank accounts is really rather rude. They'll raise it by some but how much will they raise bulk mail rates? Seems they're beholden really to junk mailers which most carriers literally throw straight into my apartment's lobby trash

Here is the official USPS announcement:

U.S. Postal Service Recommends New Prices for July 2024

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/nat...uly-2024.htm

As of this coming July, the rate will have gone up $0.10 per Forever stamp since January 2023. If my math is right, we will have $0.98 Forever stamps in January 2027 at the current rate of $0.05 increases every six months. For perspective, when I joined the forum in 2019, the rate was $0.55/stamp. Does anyone else also think this is unsustainable?

I mean, isn't Denmark at over $4 for first class mail? There's a joke that if you live close to a neighboring European country it's cheaper to drive over there to mail your letter. We don't have that luxury and also cmon, is $1+ really too expensive to mail a physical object up to 3000 miles away in just a few days? It seems kind of crazy it's been this cheap this long. Mailing used to be a luxury didn't it? To buy a penny black would've cost like a days labor or something right? Something like that. I think even at a dollar it's a fair price. However, I WOULD be pissed if they kept raising the cost of extra services. Registered mail costs $20.75!!!! That's absolutely insane. In Estonia it's like $5 or something (based on some purchases I've made, but could be wrong). Certified mail just keeps getting more expensive. It's like, they're doing the same amount of lazy work at the counter, stop raising the prices.

You haven't been paying attention because they started rising prices twice a year some time ago.

My understanding of the first new Forever Design to be issued for the new rate will feature the quote, "Inflation is just transitory" in the manner of the old Celebrate the Century stamp series which took snapshots of famous moments.

Sorry Eye, but I was paying attention as I only copied and pasted the Headline of the article.

In reality, the 1-22-23, 7-9-23 and 1-21-24 rate changes all occurred within 365 days, aka one year, but not a calendar year.

But on that theme, there was a raise in January 2024 and now one set for July 2024, two in about 6 months with plenty of time for a third this calendar year.

Edited for more detail.

We're in a world where national post offices have service obligations, but lose money meeting them in a declining market for letters. Here the cost of a standard (smallish, <100 gms) letter is now £1.25 for first class and £0.85 for second, and the debate about daily deliveries goes on. Prices in mainland Europe areiften higher still. US prices are low by comparison.

what would the 3 cent stamps of 1851 / 1861, adjusted, cost today? OK, a lot has changed, apples and oranges.

I'm just surprised that we can still mail a letter for less than a buck. With .99 cent stores shutting down or raising prices to $1.25, maybe stamps need to go to 2 bucks.

Just for reference

OK, hot take: the US needs to stop selling postage stamps. We're increasingly headed towards a choice between having postage stamps or having a viable postal service, and given the choice between the two -- I'm not saying there aren't other options, of course, just that these are two of them -- I'd prefer to keep the postal service.

These piecemeal price increases can help USPS keep up, but nothing's going to really stem the tide of declining usage in the face of substantial, enduring service and financial obligations.

The current path is unsustainable, and would be so even without the ever-increasing problem posed by counterfeit postage. So, what to do?

I believe that the basic service obligation should be prioritized above all else -- meaning that every house, in every town, receives service.

As such, if they need to scale it back to five days a week rather than six, fine.

Furthermore, people complain about price increases -- but most of us are spending less money on postage, in aggregate, just because the vast majority of us mail far fewer letters than we used to.

So If they just raise prices to a dollar and leave it there for awhile, fine. Or maybe raise prices higher: as the graph above shows, letters in the US are still pretty cheap.

Next, deal with the other revenue problem: counterfeits.

Most Americans are conditioned to starting their search for goods online - Amazon, Google, Temu, whatever. So it's natural for those who send the occasional letter to buy stamps online, and since we're also all conditioned to shop around for a deal, many end up (unknowingly) buying fakes.

The recent decision by USPS to summarily destroy all letters with counterfeit stamps strikes me as unfair: a lot of people who don't really know any better will be impacted.

And besides, counterfeits are so, so good these days -- only the most sophisticated collectors are likely to spot them.

Only sensible thing to do, sadly, is to get rid of postage stamps, and replace them with one-time use codes, labels, etc.

Maybe keep a carve-out for stamps with a face value of 32¢ and under, or something like that, so people can continue to use up their old stocks.

But counterfeiting forever stamps is just too easy, and it's depriving USPS of serious revenue.

Yeah, this would tick off a lot of collectors -- and even just people with a lot of stamps sitting around. But I don't really see how else the USPS will be able to continue as a going concern that upholds its obligations unless it takes aggressive action to go after problems on both the cost and revenue sides.

It is interesting to see that reduced mail volume is blamed for higher costs.
This quote is from the MSN article:

"Like other postal services across the world, it is facing headwinds as fewer people send physical mail.
In 2023, USPS handled 116.1 billion pieces of mail, compared to a peak of over 213 billion in 2006."

The Postal Service couldn't make a profit back when they had higher mail volume, and they can't make a profit today.
It would seem that we are seeing the true rate of inflation with these increases.

Another thing to consider:
In 2021, The Postmaster General was the second-highest-paid federal government employee after the president. His base salary along with performance bonuses, totaled $480,985, according to USPS data.
$480,985 would buy a lot of stamps. And that is just one employee at the top.
I know our local mail carrier doesn't make anything close to that amount.
Just my thoughts.

Until private businesses like UPS and FedEx are required to deliver to places like the Northwest Angle and Bettles, AK, Congress really ought to be looking at the core issue of considering the Postal Service as a quasi independent corporate entity and go from there.

Edit- Grammar

Outrageous.


In either case, the PmG needs to be held accountable for the quality and performance improvements (or lack thereof), and his pay raises and bonuses tied directly to those metrics.
Like any employee, they need to have measurable performance goals to meet, and if they fall short, no bonus, and if they greatly exceed the goals, then big bonus.

The Postmaster General ORIGINALLY was a member of the President's Cabinet & is paid as such. Under Postal Reorganization, the position was to be a position market competitive salary with approval of the Board of Governors, not to exceed the President's salary. I do not know if that is still the process.