is due to the various service’s "Times" magazines having periodic "how your pay stacks up" issues that attempt to show that service members are not equitably compensated when compared to equivalent occupations in the civilian world. I find those articles generally to be a crock of feces.

Steve, you might point out to them also that their BAH and BAS are tax free as well. Military members do not pay for health insurance nor have “co-pays” when they go to sick-call. They do not have to participate in a retirement fund yet are guaranteed 50% of their base pay at 20.

I have yet to hear of a company that pays 100% of your medical costs, provides you a tax free housing and meals stipend, and has a pretty generous retirement package that requires zero contribution from you
While I agree that comparisons go too far, I would submit that offering an equally false comparision between military life and civilian life does not help either. On both sides of the issue, comparisions are used to further agendas that do not translate well because their points of origin are vastly different.

As a cautionary example, if you remember some bright young staffer early in the 1st Clinton White House decided that military moves were really a benefit that should be calculated in your annual salary and taxed. That got tossed out the window pretty quickly but only because the military and military advocacy groups weighed in.

Going back to Cav's original point, that service members can be quite dismissive of others benefit programs even as the service members enjoy benefits that are quite good. I have found that to be quite true, especially among the officer corps when labor issues are discussed. Working in a military and civilian environment as a military retiree surfaces similar tensions. Such things will never go away. But they still must be discussed and worked out openly lest they get completely out of hand.

We as military are hardly unique in this regard. FSOs are in my opinion great folks for the most part; that said, they can be overly focused on making sure they get theirs and some of everybody elses cake when it comes to various perks. The same holds true for other groups.

Finally I would say that what constitute as a service members benefit package today is dramatically different than where it was 30 years ago when I started (even more so when Ken carved his X on a stone tablet). So even as we compare our military apples we need to realize that the types of apples vary greatly. The great leveling, of course, takes place when you retire.

Tom