With holiday card sending way down, is the Post Office the next to crash?

Updated

Remember when the Post Office started coming out with self-stick stamps? The novelty was thrilling. No longer did we have to lick them! It felt like we were in a golden age. For a while there, sending stuff felt fresh.

In 2008, though, the United States Postal Service tried out something new that seemed to scare people away: Raising the price of postage again. Never mind that now we've got the "Forever Stamp," which essentially encourages us to hedge the price of postage. The way it played out, people simply reached the tipping point.

Last year, the Postal Service delivered some 20 billion pieces of mail between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year, the figure was more like 19 billion. As the Miami Herald put it, that's three fewer pieces of mail for every American. Bad news for the USPS, which is already $1 billion in the hole.

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