Some good news has come along with the bad news that it soon will cost 39 cents, instead of the present 37 cents, to mail a one-ounce letter. The U.S. Postal Service is studying a proposal to offer a “forever” or “perpetual” stamp, which could be used regardless of future postage increases.

You could stockpile a bunch of these stamps for future use and never have to worry about their getting out of date. And when the price of a stamp went up, you wouldn’t have to buy a supply of, say, two-cent stamps to make up the difference. Your old “forever” stamps would still be good.

So the idea would be good for the consumer. It also would help the Postal Service. Postal clerks would no longer face a rush of business at the counter every time the rate went up. There would also be a public-relations advantage. The Postal Service, like any business, must hate to keep telling the public that the price has gone up. With the “forever” stamp, the warning could be coupled with an invitation to stock up on some stamps at the present price.

A group working on the issue is slated to report its findings by next July. One question is the financial impact of the scheme on the Postal Service. An advantage would be that the Postal Service would get income in advance and be able to take advantage of the “float.” Would people hoard big supplies of the “forever” stamps, depriving the service of future income at the higher rate? This isn’t likely, because the stamps wouldn’t be offered to businesses, and individuals could always find better ways to invest their money.

Britain is one of 30 other countries that have been issuing these stamps for some years. The American working group hoped that it could get some pointers from a study the British postal service made of its system, but word came back from London that the report had been “lost in the mists of time.”

Pressure from the Postal Service’s Office of the Consumer Advocate seems to have brought the idea this far. In a written agreement with Postmaster General John E. Potter, the consumer office promised not to file a formal case proposing a “forever” stamp, in exchange for Mr. Potter’s commitment to establish the working group and post on the Postal Service’s web site performance data for express mail, priority mail, first class mail and package services.

At least one member of the U.S. Postal Rate Commission already likes the idea. Commissioner Ruth Y. Goldway, long active in consumer affairs, urged its adoption in an article in The New York Times. She said that besides helping consumers adjust to rate increases it would help the Postal Service “shed its image as a stodgy, unresponsive government monopoly.”