Making No Cents

Several days after the U.S. Postal Service dropped the price of sending a one-ounce letter from 49¢ to 47¢, almost 40 people stood in line at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Station, a post office in Manhattan, fiddling with their smartphones, making conversation, or just staring into the middle distance. Perhaps they were there for discounted stamps? A clerk at the window laughed at the suggestion. “Two cents?” she said, rolling her eyes. “Are you kidding? It’s the same as always.”

She had this much right: The public didn’t clamor for the April 10 stamp price decrease, the first in 97 years. U.S. postal rates are among the lowest in the industrialized world. In 2015, according to the USPS, it cost 96¢ to mail a 1-ounce letter in Britain and $1.51 to send one in Denmark, which is about 200 miles across at its widest, roughly 3,800 miles less than the distance from Anchorage to Palm Beach. Until recently, Spain was the only nation in the developed world that charged less; now the U.S. and Spain are tied at the bottom.