2.4 Billion Holiday, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa Stamps!

Interesting that the 09/08/2011 edition of The Postal Bulletin has been posted early. Within its content is the detailed information on all of the 2011 holiday stamps:

http://about.usps.com/postal-bullet.../pb22319.pdf

Does anyone else find it rather surprising that the sum total of all of the so-called "holiday" stamps will come out to more than 2.4 BILLION (with a "B") stamps based on a US population of only 307 MILLION (with an "M") suggesting that there will be enough stamps printed this holiday season to supply every man, woman and child in the USA with 8 stamps each! Wow! That seems like an excessive printing project for a financially strapped US Postal Service that is complaining of a significant decline in mail use.

In essence, there will be 3 varieties of the secular holiday stamp: 600 Million by Ashton-Potter in Booklets of 20; 900 million by Sennett in Booklets of 20; and another 252 million by Sennett in ATM Booklets of 18, which totals 1.752 billion stamps for that issue alone.

Added to the 1.752 billion secular stamps are:
600 million Christmas stamps; and
25 million Hanukkah stamps; and
35 million Kwanzaa stamps
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2.412 BILLION stamps in total for these holiday issues combined!

The Christmas issue is one of the few issues that I actively pursue to mail Christmas cards. Other than those, I use whatever stamps are available at the PO.

While I agree that, if you are in financial trouble, austerity measures are a good way to go, if you are printing, say, 207 million of something, then printing an extra few hundred million doesn't cost that much more. Printing costs decrease drastically with an increase in volume, especially when you own the presses. Perhaps the USPS figures it can't easily make it's money back through us collectors?

Maybe as "Forever" stamps, these issues will be sold through more than one holiday season?

That's a lot of self adhesive to deal with...