If you were prescient and stocked up on the Forever Stamp while it was still available at $0.41, you may be able to say "Gotcha!"
A small news item caught my eye this morning. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) posted a loss of $1,100,000,000 for the quarter ended June 30th. Yes, that is $1.1 Billion that was lost by the USPS, now a private organization.
The reasons cited were reduced mail volume (blamed on the slowing economy) and rapidly rising transport costs.
We can all understand that the cost of fuels that go into delivery have gone through the roof. Everything delivered costs more, or soon will. And, the economy has slowed. Given the apparent political stalemate on drilling for oil here and now, fuel costs will likely do nothing but continue to increase. Your Forever Stamps may prove to have been a really good investment since postage costs will almost certainly have to rise for us consumers.
I wonder, however, if there may be something more at work here. Is it possible that we are watching the initial death throes of snail mail as we have known it for our lifetimes? We know that more of us are computer literate today than ten years ago. I think we would agree that use of computers and other communications devices will continue to accelerate.
Between telephones and other electronic communication media, and with delivery services available that have already taken most of the parcel post market, are we in the process of ending the use of delivered items that we walk to a mailbox to retrieve? Simply look at the state of newspapers in our country today to get some idea of the potential impact.
Will there continue to be a USPS ten years from now? Twenty?
If so, what will it look like and what will it do? What will happen to all the brick and mortar that carries the USPS logo? What happens to the tens of thousands of employees?
Could this really happen? Did anyone ever ask that about horses and buggies? Did anyone ever foresee air travel in the 1850s? Did anyone ever foresee space travel in the 1930s?
