The Last Stamp

An insolvent business can either diversify or dissolve. The rate at which the US Postal Service is losing money is ludicrous at this point, but it's not all their fault. This short article from CNN Money sheds some light on the other factors. Congress. The USPS lost $5 billion in 2011, and $16 billion in 2012. I remember hearing about their massive losses for a few years now. They have been working on it since, through layoffs and rate increases to no avail. The forecast is for more, and we (taxpayers) will have to help them. It's another case of making a cut "here", all the while letting the deficit from "there" fall in the lap of our social net. Where do Americans go when they get laid off, with few real job options? Either way, we will be helping fellow Americans who have been strangled by our government again. The relationship between the postal service and DC is a slave/master type of thing.

I'm sure all of that will all be worked out with little effort on our parts. Businesses go under all the time. What I am wondering is who or what will be on the last postage stamp ever made? This site lists every postage stamp ever printed, along with histories and articles for each era. I am not a stamp collector, but the concept is cool. In America, if you make it on a stamp, you have to be somebody. I found this story from September 26, 2011, reported by www.nola.com from the AP. It lists the requirements from past to present.

The demise of the USPS is speculative on my part. They might pull it off and become a profitable venture one day; or not. It would be a shame to see them go under. The adhesive stamp system began in 1847, though the postal service as we know it was being organized almost immediately after the revolution. Powerful and respectable men built this thing as a service to us, and it has been hi-jacked by the men that now occupy those spaces. Congress has absolute control of them now; they dictate USPS policy. It's too bad that we can't buy it back from them and privatize it; it only needs a hefty dose of capitalistic creativity.

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