Forever More Expensive

 Today, another postal rate increase goes into effect. It will now cost more to send postcards, letters and parcels around the country, as well as more to rent post office boxes.  A standard 1 ounce first class letter will now cost you 68 cents to send within the USA.  A postcard, 53 cents.  Sending either internationally will cost $1.55.  That last figure impacts me the most; as a Postcrossing member, I send about 100 postcards a month.  It's a substantially more costly hobby than when I began over ten years ago.  Postal rate increases have become regular and frequent in recent years- the last one on July 9, 2023 also raised costs by a similar amount.  But we can console ourselves in the knowledge that while rates have increased, postal service has declined significantly.  Even by their own official measures posted on the USPS social media pages, average transit times for mail have grown longer over the past year.  In my own personal experience, I regularly send first class mail from Helena, Alabama to a suburban Chicago town.  For many years, mail sent on Monday would reliably arrive on Thursday.  But for over a year, that is rarely the case.  Not only is mail arriving later, but it is also much more erratic.  So I can't even adjust for slower mail in timing arrival of things like birthday cards, as they now may arrive early or late.  For this, we have only Trump appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to thank.  He may be making some progress in making the USPS more financially self sufficient, but he's single handedly destroyed the goodwill the service once had.  Other government services from Amtrack to the air traffic control system are similarly intended to be financially self supporting, but rely on government subsidies, without incurring the political outrage the USPS deals with.  For myself, I wish for a return to the days when the government had to provide a subsidy, but when the USPS was a reliable and dependable service that was able to move mail at least as quickly as it did 100 years ago.  Sadly, that's no longer the case.