US Post Office Delivers A Major Blow to Small Businesses

Ok .. so I went to the Post Office today to mail out a Dalek hat that they LOST back in December. It was international mail, so no tracking number. The person that ordered it let me know in the beginning of January as he was giving it a little extra time to see if maybe there was a delay. Nope, no delay. Lost package. So I started making another one. In my Etsy shop the shipping costs for a Dalek hat are: US: $4.00 Canada $4.25 EU and Europe non-EU $6.15 $6.75 for everywhere else in the world It may seem a little high but it actually was costing me $7.68 to mail everywhere but the US and Canada. I ate the extra dollar or so. Today I went to the post office and it cost me a whopping #12.75 to mail the SAME hat to Italy! That's all that was in the package! Just the hat! Can you say utterly gobsmacked?! I asked the lovely lady at the post office (and no, I'm not being sarcastic. She's really nice) why it cost so much. SHe said that the cost of ALL international shoipping went through the roof that even the people that work there were surprised it went up like that. They were even MORE surprised to see Canada lumped in with the rest of the international mail like that. It used to be cheaper to mail to Canada than the rest of the world, but now it's all the same. So now there's the dilema, I can't charge $6.75 for shipping and have to pay $12.75 to ship. But to charge even $11 to ship an item that costs $35.00? I'm going to lose a lot of sales that way! Thanks a lot US Postal Service! You're effectivel killing small businesses by charging ridiculously high shipping costs and killing potential sales for people like me that have people outside the US interested in our wares! You Suck!