AS I SEE IT
By Neal A. Shipman
Farmer Editor
It seems a little bit ironic that right after President Biden signed the Postal Service Reform Act two weeks ago that is projected to save the U.S. Postal Service more than $50 billion over years, the Postal Service announced its plans to increase postage rates this summer.
The U.S. Postal Service announced last week that it wants to increase postage rates this summer - less than one year after it last increased the price for a first-class Forever stamp. The new price would rise to 60 cents from its current 58 cents. The higher stamp price is proposed to take effect on July 10, or 11 months after its postage rate increase in August, when stamps went from 55 cents to 58 cents. That means customers will be paying nine percent more for postage compared with prices less than a year ago.
But it just isn’t people who are buying stamps that are going to be feeling the impacts of the proposed new postage rates. Newspapers, such as the McKenzie County Farmer, will be seeing an increase of 8.5 percent under the new proposals. And that means that newspapers across the country that rely on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver their papers to their subscribers are going to be forced to increase subscription rates as well.