End the All-Volunteer Force

[AmericanPride]

It's NASCAR not Nascar! That's Important

Aw shucks! I always screw that one up!

it ends up saying more about you than it does about southerners.

Like I said before, I'm not particularly concerned with my reputation on a fairly anonymous opinion board. Anyway, beer, fishing, and NASCAR (I got it right that time!) are staples of Southern culture and that shows in military culture as well. I suppose I could add tobacco too.

Additionally, being a beer-snob myself, let me tell you that you're flat out wrong about the beer (PDF File).

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.

Well, you didn't explain the discrepancy. You didn't explain why I, just to name one example, would be more productive to society instead of a net drain had I been drafted instead of volunteering.

I mentioned it here. Let's say you were drafted in 1940. As a private, you would have earned 50$ a month. While in the States, and in England, you probably would have spent that money while on pass. Then you get shipped off to Italy or France or some other combat zone where your opportunities to spend your wages probably totaled around zero. Suddenly the war is over, you are demobilized and you're sent home. Now you have the GI Bill. So you decide to go to medical school or law school or tech school. After graduating, you open your own practice and hire a couple of nurses and secretaries, or legal assistants, or whatever. You also buy a newly constructed home in the suburbs with your VA benefits to raise the large family you're about to start. Between 1944 and 1973, up to one third of the population follows a similar path, since the draft made them eligible for the program. Businesses are founded, neighborhoods are constructed, and families are started -- incomes rise, commerce grows, and the tax revenue increases, enabling the government to invest in education, technology (yes, like the internet), the interstate system, and so on.

Fast forward to 2012. Maybe you're a private, or a NCO, or an officer. It doesn't matter. Maybe you use the GI Bill, or Tuition Assistance, or the military's graduate studies program. Most likely, you're a careerist since retention rates are fairly high. So with the exception of the direct payments to your education institution, your education isn't value added to the economy; just your career (and only to a small extent). You don't hire anybody or start a business because the military gives you people to supervise. You might buy a home or rent, but eventually you'll leave your current neighborhood for the next one -- which might be in a foreign community. And when you deploy, you supervise or guard the construction of a new school or outpost. Or two. Or three or four. And to defend these gains invested outside of the country, you might fire a few rounds from your unit's crew served weapons or direct the targeting of a JDAM. Whatever you decide to do, you expend America's wealth abroad, not at home. It's not your fault of course; a well-to-do company makes those missiles, and the military purchases them for a few million dollars, and they're designed to be expended on the battlefield while that company's earnings are divested among its owners (some of whom may be in Congress). And maybe that school you spent a year trying to get started does get off the ground, but how many of those Iraqis and Afghans are going to grow up to start a business or own a home in America? The point is, you don't leave the service and your net economic input into the economy is equal to that of your disposable wages, since your time and energy and resources are generally spent abroad. And you repeat that process two or three or even four times.

You've established nothing. You repeatedly asserted a connection and then refused to substantiate it. When specifically challenged, you demurred and said you were only pointing out "that these things were better during the most recent draft period than after it with the all-volunteer force." Which is to say that you admited there is nothing to support the connection you say you established!

I've pointed it out here and here. This article provides a good overview.

Clearly we need to recruit - or maybe conscript - more pirates!

That would give our multi-billion dollar warships something to do.

[wm]

It's NASCAR not Nascar! I mentioned it here. Let's say you were drafted in 1940. As a private, you would have earned 50$ a month. While in the States, and in England, you probably would have spent that money while on pass. Then you get shipped off to Italy or France or some other combat zone where your opportunities to spend your wages probably totaled around zero. Suddenly the war is over, you are demobilized and you're sent home. Now you have the GI Bill. So you decide to go to medical school or law school or tech school. After graduating, you open your own practice and hire a couple of nurses and secretaries, or legal assistants, or whatever. You also buy a newly constructed home in the suburbs with your VA benefits to raise the large family you're about to start. Between 1944 and 1973, up to one third of the population follows a similar path, since the draft made them eligible for the program. Businesses are founded, neighborhoods are constructed, and families are started -- incomes rise, commerce grows, and the tax revenue increases, enabling the government to invest in education, technology (yes, like the internet), the interstate system, and so on.

Fast forward to 2012. Maybe you're a private, or a NCO, or an officer. It doesn't matter. Maybe you use the GI Bill, or Tuition Assistance, or the military's graduate studies program. Most likely, you're a careerist since retention rates are fairly high. So with the exception of the direct payments to your education institution, your education isn't value added to the economy; just your career (and only to a small extent). You don't hire anybody or start a business because the military gives you people to supervise. You might buy a home or rent, but eventually you'll leave your current neighborhood for the next one -- which might be in a foreign community. And when you deploy, you supervise or guard the construction of a new school or outpost. Or two. Or three or four. And to defend these gains invested outside of the country, you might fire a few rounds from your unit's crew served weapons or direct the targeting of a JDAM. Whatever you decide to do, you expend America's wealth abroad, not at home. It's not your fault of course; a well-to-do company makes those missiles, and the military purchases them for a few million dollars, and they're designed to be expended on the battlefield while that company's earnings are divested among its owners (some of whom may be in Congress). And maybe that school you spent a year trying to get started does get off the ground, but how many of those Iraqis and Afghans are going to grow up to start a business or own a home in America? The point is, you don't leave the service and your net economic input into the economy is equal to that of your disposable wages, since your time and energy and resources are generally spent abroad. And you repeat that process two or three or even four times.

If the above is your argumemnt for how a draft yields an improved economy, it has some fatal flaws. The Baby Boom scenario shows what happens after a soldier demobilizes. A draftee need not be the only one who demobilizes. The 2012 scenario only discusses part of the WII example, as it speaks only to a soldier who continues to serve.

Your description of the current defense industry is only partially correct. 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.

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).