The Nineteenth-Century Idea that Could Keep the U.S. Postal Service Alive

Earlier this month, the price of a first-class stamp fell for the first time since 1919. The drop, from forty-nine cents to forty-seven cents, took place following the expiration of a rate surcharge that was enacted in 2014 to help the U.S. Postal Service deal with the aftereffects of the Great Recession. The dip likely won’t matter much to most consumers, but it amounts to a loss of about two billion dollars a year for an organization that lost 5.1 billion dollars in the 2015 fiscal year alone—enough, that is, to substantially worsen the financial troubles that the service has been facing ever since the Internet rendered its first-class-mail business pretty much irrelevant. The press release announcing the price cut sounded as though it had been written by the most sullen clerk at your local post office: Megan J. Brennan, the postmaster general, was quoted calling the rate decrease “unfortunate,” and the service vowed to work to reinstate the surcharge.