So the U.S. Postal Service is bumping the price of first-class stamps by 2 more cents. The new price, 44 cents, will go into effect on May 11. The reason they are hiking the price from 42 to 44 is that they wanted to pay special tribute to Barack Obama, the 44th President.
I kid, I kid. The real reason is the simple fact that the USPS is struggling. They’ve been struggling for a very long time. There’s also been talk recently of cutting a day of delivery from the current 6-day delivery schedule. Then there are the salary freezes, hiring freezes, district office closings, restructured delivery routes. Lots of rumbling throughout the organization.
See, the USPS has always sort of been the government’s equivalent of the red-haired stepchild. You’ll notice it’s one of, if not the only government Web site that ends in “.com” rather than “.gov.” For a long time, the government actually wanted to “spin off” the postal service to stand on their own. They wanted to make them a viable commercial competitor to FedEx and UPS. Bottom line: They wanted to not have to give the USPS federal funding anymore.
But then a funny little thing happened: online bill pay. See, it wasn’t bad enough that the fine art of epistolary communication was dying a slow death at the hands of e-mail and “OMG txt spk 2 my BFF!” But then one of their strongholds began turning against them. Credit card companies and utilities like PEPCO, WSSC, and Comcrap…er, Comcast began accepting online payments. They, in fact, were encouraging online payments. From their standpoint, it was more economically feasible. If more customers paid electronically, they’d need fewer mail room staff and fewer data entry staff to process the tangible payments.
Of course, what’s good for the goose is kicking the gander right in its sack. Which is why the price of stamps keeps going up with greater and greater frequency. Now I know lots of people out there are grumbling over the steady price hike. Never mind that the United States continues to enjoy some of the lowest postage rates in the world. And we’re also able to buy “forever stamps,” which are just stamps that don’t show the postage rate anymore. This is so we can continue to use up our old stamps without having to find 1- or 2-cent stamps to meet the increased rate.
Personally, I’m a big fan of the forever stamp. I’m also a big fan of the USPS. That’s because my father was a faithful employee of the postal service for almost his entire working career. I have him and that gorgeous blue and white eagle for whom he worked to thank for everything ever purchased for me throughout my childhood and adolescence, including my ability to be a bronze-turtle-rubbing liberal arts dilettante.
So to all you perpetual gripers who want to complain about yet another postage hike, I say stick it…stick it right onto an envelope and mail it. You want the hikes to slow down? Start using the service more frequently. Stop using online bill pay. Mail your payments like they did in the “old days.” The more people who use the service means the more revenue…which means they might actually be able to pull back on future hike plans.
I guess all I’m saying is, give the postal workers a bit of a break. The government rarely does (all those big government salary increases you hear about all the time? My dad and his coworkers never saw any of those increases in their checks). Yes, this is a dying industry, thanks to all the technological advances we’ve made in recent years. One day, maybe, there will be no USPS at all. But for now, they are still needed (who else is going to bring me my Netflix movies and Amazon packages?), so go easy on them when they have to charge a little more for postage.
And that’s my 2 cents on the matter.
