End the All-Volunteer Force

[wm]

I have not intentionally over-looked your claim, though I wonder on what basis you claim the whole "1940 - 73" time to be sui generis. There are significant differences in today's economy compared to the most recent draft era, a number of which are: increased financialization of the economy, higher concentrations of wealth in the upper echelons of society, and extremely low effective tax rates for the wealthy and corporations (who, as I noted, also have more of society's wealth). These may or may not be relevant to the effects of mass mobilization,though I think putting the 16.7% of youth that are unemployed to work (even if they're just mowing laws in the brigade footprint), is better than having that labor idle.

You have hoisted yourself by your own petard, refuting your own argument from analogy. Rather than showing why the 1940-73 period is not sui generis or, in other words, is similar to the current time, the above quotation by you points out that the economy of today is relevantly dissimilar from the economy that you alleged received such a boost from conscription between 1940 and 1973.

Not that I feel any real need to justify my claim regarding the uniqueness of 1940-73 but as a starting point I will submit that between 1941 and 1945, the US was engaged in a war that was fought on both sides of its ocean borders (Asia and Europe/MENA) with countries boosting armies that were peer competitors of, or better than, any other army in the world at the time. I think the German and Japanese armed forces were substantially better trained and equipped than the US Army until such time as they were attrited by the generally much-lower-tech, mass-produced materiel coming from the "Arsenal of Freedom" that was protected from attack by two major oceans.

By the way, I can tell you from experience as a soldier on casual duty status while awaiting orders, "mowing lawns in the brigade footprint" is far from meaningfiul employment. I suspect it would cause more harm than good to put a number of disaffected, because unemployed, youth to such work. Let's talk about diluting the the fighting strength, as the brigade has to use its troops to watch over the under-employed youth who are acting out in the brigade cantonment area. But I suspect my experience as a troop during those golden years of the draft are just anecdotes to be discounted, as are my subsequent experiences as an officer while the Army moved from a mixed force through VOLAR to the AVF (or all vounteer Army as we called it when I retired).

[AmericanPride]

You have hoisted yourself by your own petard, refuting your own argument from analogy. Rather than showing why the 1940-73 period is not sui generis or, in other words, is similar to the current time, the above quotation by you points out that the economy of today is relevantly dissimilar from the economy that you alleged received such a boost from conscription between 1940 and 1973.

No -- I clearly stated that while there are differences, neither you or I have established to what extent they are relevant. According to your strict interpretation, we might as well discard all of history as a useful tool in discussing policy and it's consequences since history never literally repeats itself. I'm open to a discussion about those economic factors I named (and others if you have them) since I'm not wholly convinced they are irrelevant.

Not that I feel any real need to justify my claim regarding the uniqueness of 1940-73 but as a starting point I will submit that between 1941 and 1945, the US was engaged in a war that was fought on both sides of its ocean borders (Asia and Europe/MENA) with countries boosting armies that were peer competitors of, or better than, any other army in the world at the time. I think the German and Japanese armed forces were substantially better trained and equipped than the US Army until such time as they were attrited by the generally much-lower-tech, mass-produced materiel coming from the "Arsenal of Freedom" that was protected from attack by two major oceans.

While this is factually true, it doesn't contradict or refute the positive economic outcomes gained from mobilizing millions of men between 1940 and 1973. US spending in the GWoT exceeded that of WW2, and faces more numerous disparate threats that require a large, flexible force to manage. What was relevantly unique about WW2 was the scale of destructive power unleashed, but, as you stated, this had no direct impact on the US.

By the way, I can tell you from experience as a soldier on casual duty status while awaiting orders, "mowing lawns in the brigade footprint" is far from meaningfiul employment. I suspect it would cause more harm than good to put a number of disaffected, because unemployed, youth to such work. Let's talk about diluting the the fighting strength, as the brigade has to use its troops to watch over the under-employed youth who are acting out in the brigade cantonment area. But I suspect my experience as a troop during those golden years of the draft are just anecdotes to be discounted, as are my subsequent experiences as an officer while the Army moved from a mixed force through VOLAR to the AVF (or all vounteer Army as we called it when I retired).

I agree with you that there is much time wasting in garrison. The point is that an 18 year old mowing lawns is at least making a paycheck and putting his disposable wages back into the economy. This is not true for the 16.7% of unemployed youth for whom jobs simply do not exist. As for your personal experiences, they're great. But yours, like mine I described elsewhere on this site, are not established to be the norm by virtue of us experiencing them.

[wm]

No -- I clearly stated that while there are differences, neither you or I have established to what extent they are relevant.

You said that the differences "may or may not be relevant," which is a tautology. Using a disjunction with two contradictory terms as its disjuncts provides no real information content. It is, instead, rather obfuscatory, does not really further understanding, and does not advance the search for truth.

I think that the relevance of the differences you described, viz., "increased financialization of the economy, higher concentrations of wealth in the upper echelons of society, and extremely low effective tax rates for the wealthy and corporations" is rather patently obvious. The impacts of dumping a rather large pool of mostly semi-skilled laborers who are more used to breaking things than to building them (which is at bottom what a demobilized military force is with regard to the civilian economy--whether in 1945 or in 2012) will be significantly different in a service-based economy (2012) than in a industrial/product-based economy (1940-1973). Service-based economies require skills that are not those normally connected with "servicing targets," as an euphemism for combat goes. They include people skills and salesmanship skills, the kinds of things currently identified as lacking in the force that needs to "win friends and influence people" to counter an insurgency successfully.

By the way, your exposition to date has not made clear how a large influx of laborers will realign the "effective tax rates for the wealthy and corporations" or draw "wealth from the upper echelons of society." Changing tax rates requires legislation and realigning wealth requires either a willingness on the part of the wealthy to part with their money or legislation to force income redistribution (for example, a simple graduated income tax system with no exemptions whatsoever).

According to your strict interpretation, we might as well discard all of history as a useful tool in discussing policy and it's consequences since history never literally repeats itself. I'm open to a discussion about those economic factors I named (and others if you have them) since I'm not wholly convinced they are irrelevant.

As I trust my second paragraph, supra., demonstrates, I have not applied a strict definition to determine relevance. I also have not played fast and loose with statistics, based on questionable assumptions, that amount to over-generalizations. I have tried to ensure that I use the amount of precision appropriate to the subject matter at hand.

Even though my avatar is of Don Quixote, I have decided to stop tilting at this windmill. This will be my last response to your mutating arguments for what seems to me to be a dogmatic, ill-founded position.

[AmericanPride]

If an economic impact is sought, especially with youth unemployment, there are far better and probably cheaper, less dangerous options.

I agree. I never claimed conscription to be the only or most effective method in addressing the economic problems faced by this country. You probably know as much as I do that there is much stronger resistance in the US than the UK to government intervention in the economy despite the large body of evidence suggesting that measured policy is actually quite effective (and with the ironic emphasis on massive government spending in defense). Such a conversation would be as much a critique of unregulated capitalism as of the problems and inefficiencies of the all-volunteer force identified earlier in this thread. How these two ideas interact would be an interesting conversation.

If the USA continues to engage in combat and operations near combat is there not a danger that conscripts will be deployed alongside non-conscript, professional allies, for example whose skill level will exceed theirs?

Indeed. This effect, and it's potential impact on the definitive and favorable termination of a conflict, has not been previously discussed.

. In the Western world and in parts of the developing world the ethos and practice of professionalism has spread across many occupations. For the USA to argue a part-professional, part conscript military deploying outside the USA could invite ridicule.

I suppose this depends on the substance, extent, and relevance of current ridicule of the US, its policies, its military forces, and their conduct and capabilities.

Even though my avatar is of Don Quixote, I have decided to stop tilting at this windmill. This will be my last response to your mutating arguments for what seems to me to be a dogmatic, ill-founded position.

Ok, see ya!