The U.S. Postal Service got billions of dollars in bailouts in 2020 to help keep it afloat during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. But all that taxpayer money did nothing to change the trajectory of the failing quasi-government agency.

Case in point: the Post Office is going to purposely slow down its delivery of first class mail:

Almost 4 of 10 pieces of first-class mail will see slower delivery, according to Paul Steidler, senior fellow at the Lexington Institute and an expert on the postal service. That “means mail delivery will be slower than in the 1970s,” he said, calling [Postmaster General Louis] DeJoy’s plan “disastrous.”

…the postal service’s current three-day delivery standard for first-class mail — letters, bills, tax documents and the like — will drop to delivery anywhere within the U.S. within five days. In other words, Americans should now expect that letters and other mail could take up to five days to reach their destinations, and vice versa.

That could mean big problems for people who rely on the Post Office to deliver bill payments. But it could also mean some parts of the country will have worse service than others.

The bottom line, however, is the slowdown, which is intended to save money, will only make the Postal Service’s slide into irrelevancy more rapid, and ultimately permanent.

Want to save the mail? Privatize it, and end the Postal Service monopoly on first class mail. Or just stick with email and social media. They remain the ultimate work arounds for an utterly broken mail system.