Editorial
Stamps for Half of Forever
by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor
When government does something right, we should
celebrate and give it credit. The United States
Postal Service seeks to increase the postage for the
first ounce of first class mail to 42 cents in 2007,
with increases also for postal cards, express mail,
and other mailings. So that users may purchase stamps
at the new rate in advance, the USPS has announced
that it will issue "forever stamps" which will always
pay for one ounce of first-class postage.
by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor
Customers will buy them at the current postage charge and will be able to use them at whatever the rate is when used. These stamps will be an ideal inflation hedge, so some folks will stock them as a store of value. A bonus is that the gain would be tax-free if the stamps are used rather than sold for the nominal capital gain. There would be no real gain, but no tax penalty, unlike selling goods that have gone up in price and being taxed also on the inflation!
The USPS should have issued these stamps long ago. Instead, when postage rates went up, it issued stamps misleadingly designed "first class," when in fact the stamps would not fully pay for first class in all future postage increases. The problem has been that postage increases must be approved by the Postal Rate Commission, so it was uncertain whether the postage increases desired by the USPS chiefs would be in effect. At first, the USPS issued stamps denominated in letters: A, B, C, etc., which then confused users who held the older stamps.
The logical solution is to issue "eternal stamps" always good for first-class postage. About 30 postal administrations, including the the United Kingdom, have issued nondenominated perpetual stamps, while the USPS failed to do so. Finally, after over a dozen postage rate increases, the USPS has done the efficient thing, with what they call "forever stamps." Hurrah! With the ever increasing price of gasoline and other costs, along with price inflation, postal rates are sure to keep rising, and with eternal stamps, annual increases will go smoother.
Some people will hoard the stamps as an inflation hedge, but that should not burden the postal service if it invests the revenue or "float" from the stamps. Money today is better than money tomorrow. Those who stock up on the forever stamps would have to be careful to keep them dry and safe from critters that eat paper and gum. Most businesses use meters and permit imprints rather than hire labor to lick-and-stick or peel-and-stick, so they would not be affected anyway.
Government guarantees are never absolute, so it is possible that in some distant day, if the US switches to the metric system for postage weights, the forever stamps would no longer be valid for the current postage rate. But in fact all stamps issued by the USPS are still valid for postage, and so I am confident that the forever stamps will be valid at least to half of forever. To a mathematician, half of infinity is also infinity.
I have written previously on the idea of using eternal stamps as money. An alternative to today's fiat money, not backed by any commodity, would be to back the currency with a service, namely postage. Many countries have had currency crises and sudden devaluations because with fiat money, the currency can collapse down to zero if people lose confidence in it. Any devaluation or inflation is a tax on money holdings, a cruel tax that wipes out savings and unfairly rewards going into debt.
I suggested that a country such as Argentina, which had an economic crisis and currency collapse, could issue eternal stamps and then "issue currency always convertible into the eternal stamps." That would provide a stable currency convertible into postal services. So far, no country has done this, but perhaps an entrepreneur will issue private currency denominated in forever or eternal stamps, just as there are today private liberty dollars backed by silver.
Even without official postal currency, forever stamps can be exchanged for other goods, and could be used as purchasing media if an inflation-prone national currency becomes less useful as a store of value. Aside from this, the forever stamps will provide a much better transition for eternal postal rate increases, so this is an occasion to celebrate. Sure, the USPS should be privatized, and first-class postage should not be a government monopoly, but so long as government is running it, we should cheer when it finally does something right.
Copyright 2006 by Fred E. Foldvary. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, which includes but is not limited to facsimile transmission, photocopying, recording, rekeying, or using any information storage or retrieval system, without giving full credit to Fred Foldvary and The Progress Report.
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Also see: Foldvary: Stamps and Politics
Fred Foldvary on Postal Tyranny
Foldvary: Iraq: Avoid Fiat Money! |
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