The old US Post Office was a cabinet-level department (like Depts. of Defense, or Justice, or Commerce) and historically rates were kept low with govt subsidies, because it was the government.
It became an independent agency in 1971 and was renamed the US Postal Service. The subsidies ended and it had to become self-supporting, thus the rates rose to keep up with increased costs and eventually with lowered volume due to faxes, email, texting, and people being too busy reading Bits & Pieces to send their poor old mother a damn birthday card.
It’s also correlates to the CPI, which is basically the inflation rate of the dollar. So this graph is saying that a postage stamp cost relatively the same as it always has; its price is higher because the dollar is worth less.
this is linked with dollar ditching the gold standard.
The old US Post Office was a cabinet-level department (like Depts. of Defense, or Justice, or Commerce) and historically rates were kept low with govt subsidies, because it was the government.
It became an independent agency in 1971 and was renamed the US Postal Service. The subsidies ended and it had to become self-supporting, thus the rates rose to keep up with increased costs and eventually with lowered volume due to faxes, email, texting, and people being too busy reading Bits & Pieces to send their poor old mother a damn birthday card.
It’s also correlates to the CPI, which is basically the inflation rate of the dollar. So this graph is saying that a postage stamp cost relatively the same as it always has; its price is higher because the dollar is worth less.
yea emails had to really hurt them bad
Postal Workers union founded in July 1971