It’s so ridiculous, but some number of years ago the post office, strapped with ridiculous rules by congress to fund the retirement of employees that they hadn’t even hired, decided on a Forever stamp. Speculators and people that enjoy loopholes didn’t realize that even if you bought 10 million stamps at the Forever price and sold them later for 10 cents, you were betting on the fact that the post office has to raise prices almost every year.
But what the “Forever” label has actually accomplished, is a blindfold. Nobody knows what it costs to send a letter. (As of this writing, in June, 2023, it’s 63 cents for a single sheet of paper, usually a bill.) The “Forever” label on stamps has hidden the true value, except to collectors.
And I haven’t said this much, but I’ve said it enough, collecting is an important part of living. On television cable shows they show the results of hoarding, but collecting is not hoarding. Collecting — I’m going to grab at something bizarre — Horse saddles from the 1800s. TV also likes to show the riches of collecting. But that’s also rare. The importance of collecting is the concentration your tiny brain gives to this one thing.
So I collect stamps. I stopped a very long time ago with my American collection, because they were issuing one collectible after another. Every week, like an impoverished country or Island which have always relied on stamps to bring in some money. Once the US started acting like Bermuda, I realized our postal service had turned into a business that was supposed to make money. And they had to do it because of Congress and the Republican’s attempt to destroy the post office and privatize the service.
I wasn’t half wrong. I was half right. The only “service” outlined in the constitution of the U.S. is the postal service, which says it will run (a post office, I’ll look it up later), but the postal service was so important back then (1770’s) in its battle with the British, that the agency was written into the constitution. It required the U.S. to maintain a postal service. This was written, by the way, before the 1st or 2nd Amendment or the following 8 that make up the bill of rights. It’s part of the original constitution. IMHO, it would probably be unconstitutional to privatize the post office. But I don’t think it’s ever come up because it’s so deep inside our constitution. It’s not even one of the amendments which are usually the subject of cases the make it to the supreme court. The most recent “threatened” amendment was the 14th. And it still is, with Trump declaring that he will eliminate birthright citizenship with a scratch of his psychotic signature. (He does not know how to make a curve.) He doesn’t have that power, but like all tyrants, he will try to claim it.
Anyway, the “Forever” stamp is just a way of hiding postage rates. Our government uses tactics of the casino to govern, because casinos have had a very long history and have done a lot of research into human psychology. Replacing real money with casino chips, and making every chip just about the same size, allows you to forget that you are betting 40$ on a hand that you are likely to lose. “Forever” is the equivalent of the casino chip. It means nothing. It’s not a denomination. The small amount of money the post office loses on people who buy thousands of forever stamps and then sell them at a perceived discount when the price goes up is peanuts for the p.o.