The United States Postal Service, fresh off a decade of rapid stamp price inflation, is at it again: it wants to raise the price of first-class stamps to 49 cents, up from the current 46 cents.
If this 6.5 percent increase takes effect next year, letter-senders would be looking at a 10-cent gain in just eight years. It’s not your imagination: the last 10-cent gain took almost twice as long (1991 to 2006). As costs go up, and more quickly, the previously ridiculous question may be worth asking: How long before a stamp costs $1?
The price of stamps almost never increased until 1958, when they jumped by one penny to 4 cents—the first change in 26 years. Ever since, the price has gone up every two years, on average. Using historical prices as a guide to forecast the future, we get this chart:
According to this basic analysis, we should expect to see $1 stamps around the year 2030—the year Chelsea Clinton turns 50, incidentally. It all depends, of course, on funding, politics, policy, and, to some degree, inflation. In 2013 dollars, the price of a stamp has been well over 40 cents for more than 40 consecutive years.
Will the USPS even be around long enough to get there? Will the Cubs ever win the World Series? Maybe so. A lot can happen in 17 years.
