398. The Mounting

The United States Postal Service has announced that the price of a first-class stamp will rise from seventy-eight cents to eighty-two cents on Sunday. The reason given is mounting losses. The USPS is losing money, and the strategy for addressing this situation is to charge more for stamps.

This is not the first time the USPS has raised stamp prices to address mounting losses. The USPS has raised stamp prices repeatedly over the past thirty years. At each increase, the reason given has included mounting losses. After each increase, the losses have continued to mount, which is how there has been a subsequent increase. It will cost eighty-two cents on Sunday. The USPS and the strategy of raising stamp prices to address mounting losses have a long relationship.

(I am not suggesting that raising prices is the wrong response to losses. I am not qualified to advise the postal service on its financial strategy. I am simply noting that the phrase "mounting losses" appears to have been available for use at each of these price increases, and that the losses have, by definition, continued to mount after each increase, because the next increase was also attributed to them. The pattern is consistent.)

The USPS is the only organization in the United States legally required to deliver mail to every address in the country, regardless of whether delivering to that address is profitable. This requirement is not going away. People in remote areas will continue to receive their mail at the same price as people in cities. The volume of first-class mail has declined as communication has moved to other channels. The cost of operating the system has not declined proportionally. The losses mount. The prices rise.

Eighty-two cents is now what it costs to put a small piece of paper into an envelope and have a person carry it from one address to another anywhere in the country. The person who carries it has a pension that the organization is legally required to pre-fund decades in advance. This is also contributing to the situation. The stamp, which is eighty-two cents, does not fully cover any of this. The losses are mounting. There will be another announcement.