BREAKING NEWS: Homeowner Receives A Piece of First Class Mail!
But humorously, or tragically, depending on your philosophy, it is delivered to my next-door neighbor’s mailbox!!
This pile represents mail delivered to me over the past few days. Look carefully and tell me what you notice. See it? Yes, that’s it. Right in the middle of the photo. You got it, ONE first class letter, a notice from Marshall Oil that I am due for my annual furnace cleaning. Of the pile, it was the ONLY piece actually addressed to me, not Local Occupant or Resident, or catalogs, some still addressed to the previous homeowner although a dozen years have passed since we bought this home. Add to the junk mail that my children use this address for their boarding school and college mailings and assorted other things they’d rather go to mom, our mailbox is quite the repository for all things recyclable!
Honestly, I think I could go away for two weeks, not have the mail held at the Post Office, and come home to find the mailbox not even half full.
I don’t subscribe to any more hard copy magazines, preferring the online versions now.
A huge portion of my bills are in an electronic format.
No more bulky bank statements with a mound of cancelled checks inside.
And who writes letters anymore? I do. My mother does. So there’s two people.
I got half as many Christmas cards this year than last. Is it that my age group stops sending or should I be worried about my breath?
Yet, the price of a stamp will increase at the end of this month.
From the USPS website: Highlights of the new single-piece First-Class Mail pricing, effective Jan. 27, 2013 include:
Letters (1oz.) — 1-cent increase to 46 cents
Letters additional ounces — unchanged at 20 cents
Letters to all international destinations (1oz.) — $1.10
Postcards — 1-cent increase to 33 cents
Maybe the price increase is all my fault. Well, a little blame goes to you too, for getting so much mail electronically.
One of my favorite PBS Shows is called Need to Know and one, back in 2011, was Five Things You Need to Know about the US Postal Service. I couldn’t find the episode video, but I did find an article encapsulating the problems relevant to this post the USPS faces.
1. The USPS is not technically “broke” — yet.
Operationally speaking, the USPS nets profits every year. The financial problem it faces now comes from a 2006 Congressional mandate that requires the agency to “pre-pay” into a fund that covers health care costs for future retired employees. Under the mandate, the USPS is required to make an annual $5.5 billion payment over ten years, through 2016. These “prepayments” are largely responsible for the USPS’s financial losses over the past four years and the threat of shutdown that looms ahead – take the retirement fund out of the equation, and the postal service would have actually netted $1 billion in profits over this period.
2. The postal service doesn’t rely on taxpayer funds.
Until 1971, mail delivery was handled by the Post Office Department, a Cabinet department in the federal government. Postal worker strikes prompted President Nixon to pass the Postal Reorganization Act in 1971, transforming it into the semi-independent agency we now know as the United States Postal Service. The USPS in its current form runs like a business, relies on postage for revenue and, for the most part, has not used taxpayer money since 1982, when postage stamps became “products” instead of forms of taxation. Taxpayer money is only used in some cases to pay for mailing voter materials to disabled and overseas Americans.
3. Junk mail sustains the system.
From 2006 to 2010, mail volume decreased by a hefty 20 percent.
But although the days of custom stationery, handwritten letters and scented envelopes may be long gone, the USPS has been increasingly reliant on junk mail — advertisements, catalogs and other unsolicited mailbox “gifts” — to keep the service afloat. BusinessWeek notes that revenue from junk mail increased by 7.1 percent in the last quarter of 2010 – although volume has not increased since.
But here’s the kicker, the reason I think it’s all my fault:
But the lower cost of direct mailings means that more junk mail is needed to circulate in the system to make up for the accelerating loss of first-class mail.
So let’s start a new campaign. I write you. You write me. I write you again.
You know, like 1963…when we did mail alot of letters, for 5 cents each!
collectiblestampgallery.com
The postal service – like everything else run out of the District of Corrruption – has been infected by the Keynesian mindlessness that when you can’t cover the costs, raise your price. The problem is that politicians have so long promised the undeliverable to the Letter Carriers that they would have to charge $1.20 for a piece of 1st class mail and COMPEL us all under penalty of prison to use only the postal service to receive and pay our bills and engage in all other communication to balance the books at the service. Like that’ll ever work!
Hell, even the Government is undercutting the Postal Service. Beginning March 31, 2013, every government benefit paid out will be through direct deposit to the recipient’s bank account (or so they say) It is reported that cutting the postal service out of the loop will save the taxpayer $1 Billion over ten years.
Want people to use the postal service? Slash mail prices by 90% and they would see a massive surge of mailings. It would piss off the Greenies for sure, but they’d be able to float the service again.
I’ve been experiencing the same thing with our mail over the past ten years. At first, I noticed that there was always one day a week when the box would be empty. Then it rose to two days a week, then three. Now, like you, I could go away on vacation and come back to find a half-empty mailbox. I check it on Wednesdays and Fridays, and also like you, much of the mail we do get is for our daughters, who moved out ten years ago, or unwanted flyers. Meanwhile, postage in Canada goes up every January, without fail. The less business they do, the higher the prices go, and the higher the prices, the less likely people are to use the system. It’s the same downward spiral that’s happening in the US.
Interesting BB. What does a first class stamp cost in Canada?
The campaign idea is great! Just post an address for readers to send to and it might catch on big. I like writing letters but I hope you don’t mind crayon.
Crayon works for me.
I loved that you understand the real story that I only learned from my sister & brother-in-law who both work for the Post Office — specifically that:
“Operationally speaking, the USPS nets profits every year. The financial problem it faces now comes from a 2006 Congressional mandate that requires the agency to “pre-pay” into a fund that covers health care costs for future retired employees.”
What a stupid freaking idea and no wonder the USPS is always “broke” !! I totally think the pension plan and retirement plans are ridiculous (my sister retired at 50 — are you kidding me??) but as long as they are actually making money, why is everybody bashing them??
I do like writing letters and I can tell you, the South is keeping letters alive — handwritten thank-you notes are de rigeur here and don’t even think about emailing, honey.
Your mom has been famous for years for never missing a birthday, anniversary or thank-you … so I know where you get your propensity to WRITE. I love it!!!
A not-to-the-point comment here: it was a pleasure to see that 1963 Christmas stamp! Thanks for digging it up. Everyday “ordinary” graphics can be very effective at evoking memories, and I enjoyed this particular bit of time travel.
A one-ounce letter mailed within Canada is now 63 cents. The same letter sent to the US is $1.10. The first seems to increase by two or three cents every year; the second by at least a nickel.
The retirement and pension plans of many a state or federal worker has been the ungluing of profits. Look at Central Falls, Rhode Island, or San Bernadino, California. Many people go into the jobs because they know they will have a secure future, and that’s not wrong, I understand their thinking, but so often that employee isn’t forbidden from working after retirement and on a full pension and can make more post-”retirement” than when working at the job he/she retired from. Bad grammar but you get my point. I have a friend whose brother was a town highway worker, like your sister, retired at 50. Full pension. Excellent benefits. He now works full time as a consultant to a highway engineering firm and pulls in six figures, all the while still accepting his pension. That’s the issue for me. I don’t mind someone working hard to earn a pension. Heck, our dads did that at a time when corporations kept employees for 50+ years, but times have changed, the economy still is suffering and pensions often break a town or a company’s bank.
Is that Canadian 63cents? What’s the exchange rate today?
To the point about working after retiring, I live near a retired NYC detective. Twenty years on the force. Heck of a nice guy. Hard working. But now, he owns a security company, makes a fortune, but still brags about receiving his full police pension. I have no problem with him getting the pension – he worked to deserve it, but then if you move on and get another job, then you should be required to stop the pension.
Betty: I love this stamp too. The ones today are so bright, or generic. I don’t collect stamps, but if I did, I agree that this 1963 one is a beauty.
“The USPS in its current form runs like a business, ”
EXCEPT that many of the aspects that business, like the number of post offices, etc… are mandated by congress. So they can’t for example say, deliveries 3x a week and once or twice if you live in the boondocks, or just close all the little micro post offices, and have a post office truck (think library bus) pull in once a week for business…. They are stuck with a stupid business model, a monopoly and no way to change.
Fred: I grew up in the boondocks and we did not have mailboxes at the house. We drove into the village where there was a teeny post office….which says earlier on in the postal service life, some of the business decisions you say can’t be made today were made then?