I would submit that the problem here is quite different from what it seems.
The rate of increase of postal rates is linked, apparently by law, to the Consumer Price Index. They’e asking for an increase in excess of the CPI.
The CPI has been “massaged” over the years so much that it is honestly losing it’s meaning. It used to be that the CPI was calculated based on some presumed ordinary “market basket” of products, and the prices thereof.
Lately (like, the last couple of decades) the “market basket” has been so perverted by the process that it has lost all it’s meaning. Now they decide first what rate of inflation they want to report, and then they build a market basket of products that reflects that rate.
I simply don’t trust the “inflation rate” that we’ve being sold. Something is rotten.
...”that we’re being sold”.
Dang. I wish we could edit those things. Typo there. Sorry.