Last seen violating the Law of Demand

If you use first-class U.S. mail, keep those 2-cent stamps handy because the 37-cent stamp will soon be history. The thirty-nine cent rate is coming your way.

Everyone knows that these rates go up as demand for snail-mail goes down because the Law of Demand is no match for a political jobs program (with labor unions and all).

The U.S. Statistical Abstract is all you need to compare the 23-year growth (1980-2003) record of the U.S. population (28%), U.S. per capita real GDP (58%) and and U.S. Postal Service expenses (well over 200% in nominal dollars but close to 200% in real terms). And being the USPS, they get special tax and permitting treatment, etc.

This is all regular-as-a-drumbeat news. But calling attention is all that we can do.