Does anyone else see the humor in the U.S. Postal Service’s plan to raise the price of stamps by 1 cent? This will result in an increase of $1 billion in income per year, they say.
In 1995, the postal service had an operating surplus of $1.8 billion; in 1997, a surplus of $1.2 billion; and so far this fiscal year, a surplus of 1.3 billion.
By law, the service is not supposed to make a profit. I guess postal officials figure the added expenses of handling that extra trillion pennies will eat up the surplus and thereby allow them to operate at the break-even point.
Besides the obvious costs to users of first-class mail, there will be the added inconvenience of having to buy 1 cent stamps to allow us to use up the old 32 cent stamps and the added expense to the postal service of printing new stamps.
If more revenue is needed, why not raise the cost of junk mail by a proportionate amount? I am sure that a one-eighth-cent increase in the cost of mailing an advertising folder would quickly add up to more than $1 billion per year in new revenues for the postal service.
This would also help cover the cost of junk mail at the mailers’ expense, not the private citizens’.
