A stamp is a terrible thing to paste

The Post Office wants to raise the cost of a stamp from 39¢ to 42¢ to cover increased costs.

Yes, you're correct, they just raise it from 37¢ to 39¢ in January. That increase will generate $3 billion.

So, why the new increase? Simple, the $3 billion is being held in an "escrow account" rather than being used to cover costs. Why? To make the federal deficit look smaller. Don't you just love politicians?

Along with our rate increase to cover the costs that the last rate increase was supposed to cover, we are going to get "forever stamps" -- the forever stamps will sell for the current first-class rate but will be usable in the future regardless of any future rate increases. A kind of hedge fund for stamps! (And, you're probably right, as people buy forever stamps to hoard, it's a way to quickly generate enough money to cover the $2 billion the Post Office will lose this year because they didn't actually get the money from the last rate increase.)

The other proposed change is to charge by shape -- not your shape, the shape of whatever you are mailing. It currently costs 63¢ to mail a two-ounce first-class item whether it's a letter, large flat envelope or package. But the post office makes more than 30¢ on the letter, 10¢ on the flat and loses money on the package.

Meanwhile, I have been trying to figure out how many forever stamps to buy. My first calculation was to take my life expectancy times the number of Christmas cards that I send. Then I realized that if someone I know died, I would be stuck with extra stamps. So, I'm going to have to take into account the life expectancy of everyone that I send Christmas cards to -- this could take the rest of the afternoon.

Source: The Associated Press