Comment by poof131 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by poof131 | Hacker News Reader

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The privatization of the military is one of the most corrupt and corrosive things our country has done in a while. I flew F-18s for the Navy and did a ground tour in Iraq with Special Forces. Look at the pay grades in 2020.[1] E3-E6 are making about $25-40k in salary. With some hazard pay and Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) and Subsistence (BAS), depending on where you live (if not in the barracks) maybe you are making $50k. A decade ago, the contractors who took none of the risks of going on ops and were just training Iraqis were clearing $1k a day. I also saw contract pilots clearing $20k+ a month. This pay differential is morale destroying and trains people to think in market terms regarding skills that shouldn’t have a market outside of government. Now we have private armies going on offensive operations (Venezuela). But this is what the owners of the contracting firms always wanted. Privatizing a military is dumb but I guess so is outsourcing your medical supply chain, an overabundance of short-term bottomlinism the past few decades.

1. https://militarybenefits.info/2020-military-pay-charts/

The privatization of the US military is a consequence of the monetization of war that went into full swing around the 2000's. Or so I read from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine

I guess we moved from Eisenhower's concern about the influence of the Military-Industrial complex to concerns about the privatization of the Military-Industrial complex. Have we entered a new phase: Gig-Economization of the Military-Industrial complex?

This passage from a 2011 NPR article on the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower's warning caught my attention:

Eisenhower was worried about the costs of an arms race with the Soviet Union, and the resources it would take from other areas -- such as building hospitals and schools.

https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-mil...

Seems especially prescient at the moment.

What I wouldn't give for an Eisenhower Republican resurgence and an FDR Democrat resurgence...minus the racism or segregationism allowing policies. But fiscally and socially, they were way better than anybody we've got in politics now.

That’s because we had adults voting then

Our voting population was actually much younger at the time, despite the voting age being slightly higher (21).[1]

> the median age in 1940 was 29.0 years, compared to 37.2 years in 2010

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1940-us-census-data-released-on...

I think your parent comment was referring to emotional maturity--and I would agree with his/her point.

Look closely at FDRs policies and their effects they were a disaster.

Here's a good book on it: https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Man-History-Great-Depressio...

I've heard that one of the reasons the government is willing to pay contractors this much is that many of the benefits of being part of the military were back loaded, like early retirement, medical coverage, etc.

Do you have any estimation of the truth of such claims?

They were almost certainly not clearing $1k a day, the company who contracted them was.

I know folks who were making $250k per year as contractors in war zones over 10 years ago. It wouldn’t surprise me if the number is higher now. These were all for skilled jobs that required TS SCI clearances.

$250k is $5k a week for 50 weeks. These folks often didn’t work 50 weeks since generous home leave was frequently given, so $1000 a day may actually be on the low side.

Also note that there are tax exemptions via treaties or war zone exceptions that can make a significant impact on take-home wages.

Why stop at the military? The privatization of most of American institutions has lead to massive corruption and terrible outcomes for the typical citizen. We're that not far from becoming a banana republic.

We already are. We're just a relatively rich banana republic. All the corruption can skim off layer after layer of profit, and there's still enough left that we can live reasonably okay lives as long as we don't get sick.

The numbers aren't quite apples to apples; real military don't pay income tax, while private citizens ostensibly owe taxes earned anywhere in the world. Additionally, the tax rate on contract work is higher than one might expect from W-2 work. In practice, maybe some military contractors illegally evade taxes. I am wiling to believe take-home net of legal taxes owed is higher for private contractors, but the gap is smaller than illustrated by those figures.

I think hairsplitting pre- vs post-tax income in this context is a distraction.

$20k/month is a quarter mil a year. Worst case, you live in a high tax state, you might pay $100k in total tax, state + federal + local.

That leaves a take-home of $140k/year. Still almost 3x as much as a soldier making $50k/year.

The larger point is that, yet again, we have a govt bureaucracy handling a budget in hamfisted ways. (Big rigid hierarchy >> underpay recruits >> wow, the org is bloated and still expensive >> we can save money by hiring contractors.) The bureaucracy is is callous to the incentives they're creating.

If it's a much better deal to be a private military contractor vs a soldier, what does that do for morale? For cohesion? For career trajectories? (Get trained, quit asap to go private with a big pay bump...)

This general pattern has a deep historical roots. Many countries at various points in history have hollowed out their formal military by shifting to hired mercenaries. That pattern has a bad track record.

I think I agree with you about everything you've mentioned, except that I continue to believe post-tax real income is a better frame of comparison than comparing post-tax (and missing BAH and hazard pay) to pre-tax.

(Additionally, it is not clear to me that GP's example numbers for private contractors were actually modal, or just some high numbers he heard about.)

military does indeed pay income tax, i was on active duty for 8 years and filed every year. The tax advantage is just that the housing allowance is nontaxable, because it can be optionally provided as a house on base instead in a lot of cases.

I suppose I should have qualified that with "don't pay much income tax?"

Depending on your rank and what your active duty is like, much can be excluded.[1]

> Combat pay: Compensation for active service while in a combat zone

Combat zones: much of the middle east, including relatively stable countries that aren't Afghanistan or Iraq, as well as the Balkans.[2]

> Enlisted member, warrant officer, or commissioned warrant officer. If you are an enlisted member, warrant officer, or commissioned warrant officer, none of your combat pay is included in your income for tax purposes.

For officers, the exclusion has a threshold. That threshold is:

> For 2019, the applicable amount is $8,803.50 per month

Or $105,600/yr income not subject to taxes.

In addition to BAH being excluded as you mentioned, there's also BAS, BAS, OHA, other housing benefits, moving and travel, healthcare, all not subject to income taxes.

These are all sources of income (in an accounting, not IRS sense) civilians would need to pay taxes on. As a result, active military pay a much lower tax rate on their income than civilians with the same pre-tax income.

[1]: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p3#en_US_2018_publink100017...

[2]: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/combat-zones

Majority of people are in a combat zone for about 6mo at a time, and not a lot of them ever end up going at all. I never was selected for any tax exempt duty in my 8 years as an enlisted member of the USAF, and anecdotally know a lot of people who over a 4-6 year (usual single enlistment length) career who either only were deployed once or never at all.

The Afghanistan Papers[0] was a bit unnoticed by many people. It is well worth a read, especially during this time. There are many, many very interesting things in there, but I want to highlight one: General Flynn's 'Lesson's Learned' Interview, 11/10/2015.

Keep that date in your head.[1]

That the interview is public at all is amazing. It is a very good overview of the man and the issues that the US dealt with in Afghanistan. Especially considering the current media tornado with Flynn, it offers an insanely unique look under the tent.

Flynn's attitude is really one of exhaustion. He's tired, after nearly 14 years fighting in Afghanistan, he's just done with it all. He's done with Congress, he's done with the White House, he's done with the military. What is especially interesting is his attitude towards the US voting public: He's done with them too. His faith is caput.

Sure enough, exactly one month and 30 minutes after the end of this interview, Flynn is shoulder to shoulder, sitting directly next to Putin in Moscow. 12/10/2015. [2] That dinner is wild by the way.

So, not only are the lower level contractors looking outside, the top line staff are as well.

Not to be too alarmist, but there is a whole whale of bad news here. There are uncomfortably large similarities to the lead up of the Social War of 91 BC afoot [3].

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-fly...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91%E2%80%9388_BC)

If you don't really have the time to read through it, the Washington Post did a fairly good job of highlighting the interesting bits. If you have not looked at it and don't want to read the grainy .pdf, that's ok too. The audio is free to listen to. I cannot stress enough how crazy this is. That this document is out there at all, that they went through all the highlighting and editing, that the audio tape is out there, and then the cornucopia of other info too. It's amazing technical journalism, let alone the content.

Thanks for all the good infos.

Just skimming over [2], I see... wtf is Jill Stein doing at this dinner?! Yea, that Jill Stein! How odd.

Oh, and I get why but the WaPo links are paywalled and I am not a subscriber - FYI to others.

This is really off topic but that picture of the "gala" surprised me with how dingy it looked. Looks like a shotgun marriage in a prefab church.

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