Under the new plan, communities would be given the option of keeping their area post offices open but at reduced hours. Another option would be to close a postal office in one area while keeping a nearby one open full-time. Communities also could opt for alternatives including creating a Village Post Office in which postal services are offered in libraries, government offices or local stores such as a Wal-Mart, Walgreens or Office Depot.

There are currently about 27,000 post offices (as well as about 4,600 stations and branches), and there are about 23,400 postmasters. The Postal Service has already saved millions by not filling the postmaster vacancy in more than 3,600 post offices, but how much could it save if it were to reclassify, say, 12,000 post offices as stations and replace 12,000 postmasters with PMRs [part-time postmaster relief] and other categories of workers? If the replacement worker earns, say, $25,000 less than a postmaster, that would yield a savings of $300 million. The Postal Service will need to provide more details about how it hopes to save $500 million with its new strategy.

The good news is the U.S. Postal Service has announced that thousands of rural post offices will be spared closure. The bad news is that their hours will be drastically cut and some may be effectively privatized. Since the plan to close 3,700 post offices proved so unpopular, the Postal Service announced Wednesday it would instead cut the hours of 13,000 post offices, leaving some open as few as two hours a day, while others would be open for up to six hours:Full-time postmasters who are eligible for retirement will be offered buyouts, to be replaced by lower-paid part-time workers. Save the Post Office points out that, as usual, postal executives are not including lost revenue in their calculations of how much money will be saved, and suggests that even beyond that, the numbers don't add up. The claim is that these cuts will save $500 million a year, but:That the Postal Service is backing off of full-fledged closures and giving local communities some control over the fate of their post offices is good. But the public debate over the future of the Postal Service remains broken , mired in the language of crisis without acknowledging that the crisis is manufactured and effective remedies are blocked for political reasons.