Never Stamps: A $3.5 Billion Postal Subsidy

Way to go Americans: Your sloppiness, forgetfulness, and hoarding are helping to prop up the struggling U.S. Postal Service.

Based on new data about its customers’ behavior, the USPS recently added $1.1 billion to its estimate of how many Forever Stamps it has sold that will never be used for postage. These “Never Stamps” now total about $3.5 billion, according to a Dead Tree Edition review of previous USPS financial reports.