Raising the Price of Stamps Is Smart

The Postal Service's proposal to raise the price of stamps to 46 cents has set off the usual complaints, but Daniel Gross at Slate thinks it's a smart move. The current system is way too bloated, and a price increase might once and for all force junk mailers and department stores to rethink the way they flood our mailboxes (the real ones) with useless material.

"Rather than complain about the rising cost, power mail users should do what others do when the price of any resource rises—figure out how to use it more efficiently," Gross writes. "Businesses have to get smarter. And many uses of today's mail simply aren't smart." (More US Postal Service stories.)