Postage for a standard first class letter went up to 41 cents today. Many people like to argue that postage increases, which appear to be frequent these days, are a result of email being so heavily used in place of the postal service. However, a quick look at historical postal rates show that this might not be completely true.

Prior to the 1970's, there hadn't been much more than a 1 or 2 cent increase per decade. But during the 70's there was a total increase of 9 cents, another 10 cent increase during the 1980's, 8 cents during the 90's, and 8 cents so far this decade. It appears that rate increases have been pretty rapid for the past 35 years.

I will agree that email is taking the place of many things that might have once been mailed via the post office. However, the data suggests that email may not be the primary driver to this increase. While some primitive versions of email emerged during the 1960's there was no massively connected network (i.e. the Internet) for people to use. So even though some high-tech people may have had some access to email, the concept of using this was completely foreign to "normal" people.

Obviously, email is HUGE these days, but perhaps it is taking away from the postal service less than we think. For me, it's not uncommon to send 10-20 emails a day. If there were no email, I would not be sending 10-20 letters via the post office no matter what the rates were. The reason is speed. Emails may only be 1-2 sentences long and the sender may expect an immediate reply. If using the postal service, you have to spend some more time thinking about everything you want communicated because a back-and-forth type of communication is unrealistic due to speed.

So what has driven the postal rates upward for 35 years? I'm not sure, but it seems likely that there is some primary driver other than email.