"The price of a first-class stamp for mailing a letter — or paying a bill — climbed to 44 cents Monday, though folks who planned ahead and stocked up on Forever stamps will still be paying the lower rate.Government's Big Mistake would be a better title for this story ....
It's the third straight year rates have gone up in May under a new system that allows annual increases as long as they don't exceed the rate of inflation for the year before."
When they first allowed the raising of postage it was to combat the income loss due to the increased opoularity of eMail .... and lets face it, it has taken a bite out of things.
BUT the problem was, the more they raised the postage on a simple letter the less likely We, the people, were to use it ... so now that it costs nearly 9 times as much than it did at the beginning of the 1970's .... they have made it even LESS likely that people will be using the regular mail to do common everyday things -- like paying bills & keeping in touch with Great Aunt June in FL.
What they should have done was raise the cost of mailing things like packages -- after all they pretty much have that market locked up. You can't email a gift to someone .... you have to pay postage. Most people can't get to UPS or FedEx to mail a package -- in fact, both those companies charge way more than USPS does for a package (unless you have a business and you can hide personal packages amongst the company costs)
It will also not bode well that earlier this year it was released that the Post Master General got a $300,000 salary +bonus when the post office was losing money and laying people off.
I think someone, non-governmental (because we know the government can't run sh!t = so let's put them in charge of Health Care, right?), ought to do a complete and thorough census/audit of the USPS system .... they need to find out where the postal service is hermorraging money and plug it up.
Maybe the federal government needs to pass a law that makes electronic payments illegal (although I would totally hate this)... maybe they need to revamp the USPS so that letters have a lesser emphasis ...
although I wonder what that 'postage' really is - always have - because non-profits & churches don't have to pay postage on letters .... these are also non-taxable entities .... so doesn't that make POSTAGE A TAX?
well it makes sense to me ... but that would mean that people have been getting taxed for generations without knowing it.
hmmm ... so what other tax has gone up nearly 900% without people going up in arms over it?
Click to join MonthlyDishcloths
No comments:
Post a Comment