
U.S. Post Office Makes Stamps Cheaper for the First Time in 100 Years - eplanit
http://fortune.com/2016/04/07/usps-post-office-stamps/
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dpark
> _While the price cut will be a boon for many consumers, it’s bad news for
> collectors and investors in so-called “Forever stamps,” the generic stamps
> valued at whatever the current postage rate is no matter when they were
> purchased. Since Forever stamps were created in 2007, Americans have scooped
> them up as a way to hedge against future price hikes that seemed eternally
> inevitable. But that strategy has now backfired: As former Fortune columnist
> Allan Sloan put it in a 2014 column, “If stamp prices somehow were cut,
> millions of Forever holders, including me, would feel cheated.”_

Collectors don't care. They aren't buying for face value. "Investors" are
idiots if they invested heavily in forever stamps. Stamps have generally
tracked pace of inflation. You could put your money almost anywhere else and
do as well or better.

I buy forever stamps because it used to be so damned inconvenient to buy (and
remember to add) 1 and 2 cent stamps every time they raised prices. The fact
that they're lowering the price by 2 cents does not make me feel cheated.

~~~
michaelbuddy
yeah and one price drop, people who hoarded forever stamps from 2007, they
send a letter, they still saved money from today. They just gained a little
less for once. Still a gain if you think of it that way. I'm not in that
space, of stamp collecting but investments have a short term gain / loss and a
long term gain or loss. it's not that difficult to understand.

~~~
dhimes
And it's not like it's not going to go up again. Hang on to the forever
stamps, and buy the cheaper stuff now as needed.

I mean, people weren't buying US $10000 worth of the damn things, were they?

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skywhopper
So long as Congress micromanages stamp prices, the postal service can never be
fairly expected to meet its obligations without losing money. Personally I'd
be happy to let the price of mailing a letter double or more. The service
provided is incredible when you think about what's involved. Getting a letter
from your _house_ to nearly any address in the entire country in a few days at
most is worth a lot more than 47 cents.

~~~
dpark
I've never understood why congress does this. The USPS is undercharging.
Deutsche Post charges 80 cents (USD) to deliver a letter within Germany. 70%
higher rate to cover only about 4% of the land area.

~~~
justin66
At present, just about everything they do with regard to postage or the
pension fund has to do with damaging the post office's bottom line in the
interest of union busting.

~~~
SilasX
Yes, how dare they be required to fund their pensions rather than taking the
risk-shifting approach of "oh, we'll have the money later", as employed by GM,
Bethlehem Steel, ec.

~~~
zardgiv
You should try not being sarcastic, it just makes it look like you have a weak
argument and are overcompensating.

Factually, they're being required to overfund it, to the tune of 75 years in
advance, which is money that they can't reinvest. No business should accept
being run that way.

~~~
SilasX
Actually, they _wouldn 't_ have an arbitrary n-year cutoff for discounting
obligations, and would probably be in jail if they hid liabilities this way.

~~~
zardgiv
I clearly struck a nerve, since you wouldn't just post a longer version of
'no' and not support your argument otherwise.

~~~
SilasX
I explained how, if you were correct, it would have a less probable
implication. (That's how a lot of reasoning works: "if you were correct about
oxygen absorption spectra, the sky shouldn't be blue.")

Here, the improbable implication of your claim that I highlighted is that
businesses are normally allowed n-year cutoffs (for some value of n) for
discounted future liabilities.

It was not simply a reassertion.

If you need another reason your claim is implausible, it would suggest that,
should a business issue a zero coupon bond with 76-year maturity, it should
log that as an increase in book value (with corresponding tax liability). But
obviously a loan should not itself increase tax liability!

~~~
zardgiv
Perhaps if you made your point without sarcasm, you'd be able to more clearly
express yourself. But here we are.

Regardless, it's impressive that you can't handle being corrected. I get that
you think you're generally the smartest person in the room, but sometimes
you'll be wrong. Calm down, take a step back, and think critically in the
future (especially if you think you've made a logical point.)

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quanticle
How much does the USPS make from first class mail these days? I find it
somewhat strange that people are bringing up the fact that e-mail has killed
old-fashioned letters while ignoring the fact that online shopping has led to
a dramatic increase in the number of parcels shipped. Is the profit margin on
parcel delivery really that much lower than that of mail? If so, then how are
FedEx and UPS able to make a go of it?

~~~
matthewowen
There are a number of reasons which I'm sure others will go into, but one
point to mention is that FedEx and UPS can charge what they like and ship
where they like. USPS must deliver to every address and, to my knowledge,
isn't allowed to charge more to deliver to some addresses than to others.

So FedEx and UPS can make money by doing a large volume of deliveries in
cities, and not delivering to rural areas (or charging through the nose to do
so). USPS doesn't have the same freedom. In practice, this means that shippers
go with UPS or FedEx unless those places don't go to the address, in which
case USPS gets saddled with the unprofitable business.

~~~
karthikb
First class is fixed, however other services are prices based on zones:

[http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/notice123.htm#1152653](http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/notice123.htm#1152653)

~~~
matthewowen
Thank you, TIL.

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gragas
This headline completely passes over the reason why stamps got cheaper: there
were price hikes after the recession so the Post Office could recoup some of
the money it lost in the Great Recession. Given this information, the article
isn't very noteworthy.

------
ourmandave
From this chart, the total 2015 volume was 154.2 billion pieces. Of that, 80
billion was advertising pieces (51.8%).

Every Wednesday I get a mailbox full of the equivalant of Sunday paper ad
inserts.

[https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/decade-of-
fac...](https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/decade-of-facts-and-
figures.htm)

------
sbierwagen
Deflation.

~~~
jerf
Deflation would be if they wanted to lower it. They don't. They want to raise
it more, but they can't, because they are one of the most bizarrely-regulated
entities in the US.

