End the All-Volunteer Force

[ganulv]

There's a clear, documented relationship between the US draft 1940 - 1973 and American prosperity in that era.

But even I () understand that correlation is not causation.

[AmericanPride]

The Baby Boom scenario shows what happens after a soldier demobilizes. A draftee need not be the only one who demobilizes.

I agree, but with the smaller all-volunteer force, there are not nearly as many demobilized soldiers because the force is smaller and many remain in the service as careerists. Just as the draft provides a massive manpower boost to the armed forces, when coupled with generous veterans' programs, it can also lead to significant economic returns. I cited this article earlier:

The authors make it clear that the education benefits of the legislation helped spur postwar economic growth by training legions of professionals. The GI Bill, they write, “made possible the education of fourteen future Nobel laureates, two dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, three Supreme Court justices, [and] three presidents of the United States.’’ It also greatly increased access to higher education for ethnic and religious minorities who had been previously excluded.

The impact of the GI Bill would have been drastically weaker, perhaps even insignificant, without the mass demobilization following World War II (where 85% of service members were draftees), and the continued peace-time draft, giving up to one third of the population access to these benefits up until 1973.

While a few very large companies tend to be the winners of the big contracts, every one of those contracts has a host of small businesses involved in the production of the acquired goods. (Remember supply chains!) A significant portion of defense contracts are designated as small business set asides and most contracts mandate that a portion of the work be done by small businesses as sub-contractors.

I agree, but this benefit is not as great as the opportunity cost of this action:

For each million dollars, federal defense spending creates 8.3 jobs both directly and indirectly in the economy. These are jobs not only for the military personnel themselves, but also jobs in vehicle manufacturing, construction, ammunition production, and other industries which supply goods and services to the military. As we see from the figure below, the same million dollars spent in other industries such as healthcare, education, or energy efficiency, creates a greater number of jobs than military spending.

In contrast to the 8.3 jobs created by $1 million in defense spending, that same level of spending would create 15.5 jobs in public education, 14.3 jobs in healthcare, 12 jobs in home weatherization, or about the same number of jobs in various renewable energy technologies. Thus it is a fallacy to claim that we need war spending in order to bolster the economy. We see here that investments in renewable energy such as solar, wind, or biomass, would create just as many jobs as military spending. Efficiency programs such
as weatherization of homes and public buildings would create about 1.5 times as many jobs, and federal support for healthcare and education would create twice as many as the same level of military spending.

The article seriously calls into question the efficacy of small wars that have little or unfavorable political outcomes but with extremely high price tags. This other article addresses the same problem:

Heintz (2010) found that a 1% increase in investment in ‘core infrastructure’ would increase the productivity of the private sector by up to 0.2%, considering the direct effects of infrastructure investments. These estimates can be used in a hypothetical illustration. If half of the investment which built up the current stock of defense assets had been dedicated to building the core infrastructure of the U.S. economy, this would represent a 13.5% increase in the value of infrastructure assets – and a potential 2.7%
boost to private productivity (worth over $270 billion, based on current levels of private GDP).

This second article emphasizes that the US can receive greater value for its money by taking a serious look at its defense spending habits. I noted before that of the top 20 countries by active-duty end-strength, 13 have more soldiers per 1000 capita than the US. None of those, excluding the US, are in the top 20 of economies by GDP and none of them exceed the US in defense expenditures per capita either. So while we are spending (significantly) more money to field less combat power, we do not have a correlating increase in security that should presumably come along with it. Pentagon watchers in the past have noted that while defense spending increases, military readiness (and consequently effectiveness) is declining because of unexpected cost growth, production cutbacks, shrinking and aging pools of military equipment, and personnel reductions to pay for it all. This is a problem unique to the current defense political economy of the all-volunteer force that, in the last ten years, has consumed up to eight trillion dollars of US wealth. And as noted in the other articles I cited, neither does it produce in an increase in security, it is also a net drain on the economy as well. This is not to argue that defense is unnecessary, but that the current defense structure is coming at the cost of development and living conditions at home.

One last point--what funded all of the veterans benefits touted in your previous post? An interesting set of data points compares the national debt to the GDP. From 1944-1951, the US national debt was over 75% of GDP and exceeded 100% of GDP in 1946 and 1947. The 2 lowest decades for the ratio since 1940 were 1974-83 and 1998-2008 (both after the draft ended).

This is a good point and I agree that a central consequence of conscription is it's high cost. But we shouldn't be as concerned with our debt as we should be with our ability to pay for it. Much of today's political discourse is about austerity -- in other words, cutting costs to cover expenditures. But this is a failed business and economic model and rarely ever works. The aim should be for growth-based profitability, which may require greater debt to fund government programs (i.e. the interstate project or the GI bill). And as the articles I cited point out, investing in those projects would have higher returns than in defense dollar-for-dollar. So, either the way we maintain our fighting services and how those fighting services prosecute so-called "small wars" need to become more efficient, or we need to start thinking about alternative approaches to the political economy of national security. As it is, the all-volunteer force is not economically sustainable and is increasingly cost ineffective.

[Entropy]

AmericanPride,

Yes, yes, I've seen it too, which is why the source I cited listed alcohol related deaths as opposed to alcohol consumption. I guess we could add that Southerners can't hold their beer as well northerners to the list of stereotypes.

Here's the thing. The number of alcohol related deaths does not tell us who likes beer and who doesn't. It tells us the number of alcohol-related deaths. The two are not directly related, nor can it be claimed that alcohol-related deaths are a proxy indicator for liking beer without demonstrating a link between the two. Therefore, citing alcohol-related deaths is not evidence the south "likes beer." That's why I specifically cited beer consumption because people who like beer consume beer; hence that is a valid indicator to use when determining who does and doesn't like beer.

Now, this is a side point and whether or not the south likes beer is irrelevant to a discussion on conscription. However, I bring this up as emblematic of the kind of evidence supporting your arguments throughout this thread. My complaint is that you make sweeping claims and then can't or won't support them. You simply assert they are true or relevant.

Another example is your use of the GI Bill as evidence that conscription produces better economic outcomes than the AVF. The problem here is that the GI Bill is not tied to conscription, nor is it a required element of conscription. Let's say, for example, that we take away the GI Bill and the economic benefits of the GI Bill. If that happens, then all the economic benefits you ascribe to conscription that are actually produced by the GI Bill go away. Or, alternatively, let's say we give everyone in America the GI Bill - same result.

Secondly, WWII drafted a lot of people for a short amount of time and then dumped most of them back into the regular economy. You should not expect, for example, to see the same results by keeping a WWII sized conscript force as a continuous measure. In that case conscription, in most cases, hurts the economy because military service is not productive and so that labor would be more productive in the economy. Keeping several million people out of the productive elements of the economy on an indefinite basis is not going to produce the benefits you've described.

Third, this bears highlighting again:

There's a clear, documented relationship between the US draft 1940 - 1973 and American prosperity in that era.

There is also a clear, documented relationship between global warming and pirates. Pointing out correlations is not proof or evidence of anything.

As to the post-war boom, there are many more factors - factors actually shown as causal - that do relate to and explain American prosperity in that era. Conscription isn't one of them.

Finally, I think this discussion, for me, has about run its course. It seems pretty clear that we have very different ideas of what constitutes cause and effect and what is merely coincidental. Readers can decide for themselves who makes the better argument.

In closing, I'll just reiterate my position on conscription:

Simply, it's this: I think conscription is only justified by military necessity. I think conscription as a tool for social or economic engineering is dangerous and foolish.

The advocates for conscription in this thread and Tom Ricks judiciously avoid discussing military necessity because it's obvious that military forces rarely need conscription to maintain adequate manpower. So, unable to justify conscription in terms of military necessity, advocates come up with a host of alternative reasons why conscription is good or necessary. Unfortunately for them, the reasons are not well supported historically or academically.

In addition to avoiding arguments about military necessity, advocates for conscription also tend to avoid the negative aspects of conscription and the obvious problems with implementation. Conscription doesn't work very well if the military is small compared to the general population. There will always be volunteers so the number of actual conscripts is not likely to be large. If there are enough volunteers then conscripts aren't needed at all. What should be done then?

Conscription makes a lot more sense for a large military that can't get enough recruits from volunteers. To get a lot of the effects advocates describe, we would need to increase the end-strength of the military significantly, reduce compensation and benefits to discourage volunteers, and make up the difference with conscripts. It could be done but I fail to see why we need a large military to begin with - the active force we have now is already too big, IMO. Nor do I see any net benefit to creating a large force simply to justify conscription for the purposes of social engineering.

[Entropy]

Lastly, a large number of Ken's comments are anecdotal:

Oh, the irony.

[AmericanPride]

Another example is your use of the GI Bill as evidence that conscription produces better economic outcomes than the AVF. The problem here is that the GI Bill is not tied to conscription, nor is it a required element of conscription. Let's say, for example, that we take away the GI Bill and the economic benefits of the GI Bill. If that happens, then all the economic benefits you ascribe to conscription that are actually produced by the GI Bill go away. Or, alternatively, let's say we give everyone in America the GI Bill - same result.

Those are viable alternatives which have taken you way too long to bring up. So, as we can see here, the most effective solution may not be the re-institution of the draft, but government programs directed at the economic well-being of the middle class, which would bring us to the large body of evidence that both a government economic policy and a robust middle class are good for the health of a country. I have not claimed the draft to be the exclusive solution for the problems identified in this thread.

Secondly, WWII drafted a lot of people for a short amount of time and then dumped most of them back into the regular economy. You should not expect, for example, to see the same results by keeping a WWII sized conscript force as a continuous measure.

The draft period did not end with the end of WW2. It ended in 1973.

As to the post-war boom, there are many more factors - factors actually shown as causal - that do relate to and explain American prosperity in that era.

The expansive access to government economic benefits provided to a majority of the population through a sustained period of time through conscription is one of them.

The advocates for conscription in this thread and Tom Ricks judiciously avoid discussing military necessity because it's obvious that military forces rarely need conscription to maintain adequate manpower.

Military necessity was never a point of contention, so I do not see why you bring it up now as evidence against the intentions of your opponents.

In addition to avoiding arguments about military necessity, advocates for conscription also tend to avoid the negative aspects of conscription and the obvious problems with implementation.

Again, that conscription has consequences of its own was never a point of contention.

Take care.