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Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

So one of the things I like about Tiktok is you get exposed to something you normally wouldn't and it can be fascinating. One example of this I had an Air Force recruiter pop up on my fyp. This is obviously US-centric (as opposed to the article, which is the UK) but here are some things I've learned:

1. The difference between Reserve and Guard? Reserve is Federal, Guard is State (this was news to me);

2. Signing up for the Guard or Reserve is typically a 6 year commitment;

3. Your commitment begins when you sign up but you can defer your enlistment for up to a year;

4. You can sign up having completed your junior year in high school and defer training until after you graduate (which I think you have to anyway) but that's 1 of your 6 years down already;

5. Reservists get tuition assistance of up to $9,000/year;

6. Assuming a 4 year college degree and early enlistment, you can graudate with 5 years of your 6 year commitment done;

7. For one weekend a month and 2 weeks a year, you typically get $250-300/month (plus active duty pay where appropriate);

8. You also get medical and dental insurance.

As ridiculous as the US college system is in terms of cost, I'm happy things like this exist to at least give people more options. If you go to college, the above can amount to $50,000 plus benefits over a 6 year period.

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This isn't a positive. It is a tragedy that these services (education, healthcare) are difficult to obtain without military service in a supposedly developed country.

I'd argue it's a positive in that its the only route out currently for people born in certain zip codes, such that with 2 years in active duty, your whole life trajectory can change (free college, "honorable military service" stamp on your resume, so on - I'll spare the recruiting pitch). The local high schools aren't doing it, the government isn't doing it, but the military will. But...

The tragedy is that this is the only route available for people born in certain zipcodes. The dynamic of needing to volunteer to discernibly bump up the odds of your own gruesome death in order to get the only decent fair deal on succeeding in the civilian world is everything that is wrong with the US at the moment.

How can you call something a positive and then immediately call it a tragedy? that's not a positive at all!

It is positive on a micro level (that the opportunity exists) but a tragedy on the macro level (that that is the only opportunity that exists).

I will never view military service as a bad thing in totality. Locally evaluated, it's a good option. Putting aside the more heady concepts of public service and sacrifice, it is one of the last remaining conduits to change your stars and "make a man/woman/adult out of you," *although it is certainly not without faults and has certainly caused horrible experiences for people who served*. It is an imperfect organization that does its core mission well (fight and win wars), and it does its best beyond that. I know this can spark a lot of debate and "what about X" discussions, and I won't participate in those if they show up so I apologize in advance.

The tragedy is that it's the only option to change one's stars for a lot of folks and this dynamic is present across the entire country - poor rural south, poor urban, poor rust belt. High schools and governments, local or otherwise, are failing these kids, and the military is the only semi-competent entity available to help. That's not a dynamic we want.

As the son of a son of a father who wouldn't have gone to college without WWII-era tuition assistance, can confirm it changes entire family trajectories.

My grandfather had the work ethic and intelligence in him, subsequently proven, but was born dirt poor with a snowball's chance in hell he could have afforded college without the GI Bill.

The military is an option which largely accepts you if you say "Yes" and can pass a basic intelligence test. Those are the only requirements. Not your family name. Not your family wealth. Not (now) your race or gender or sexual orientation.

And in trade for that, they open up benefits that change lives.

It certainly shouldn't be the only option, but that it is an option is better than not existing.

Same thing here. My grandfather was excited when his dad found some pallets 'that fell off the back of a truck' so they could have a floor for the tent they lived in outside Portland, and not see the rats. (funny when people in PDX complain about the homeless problem, my grandpa was in those cities in the 30's and 40s)

GI bill put him into college, and set him up with an eductation that setup my mom and her 6 siblings with a 'normal' middle class life. Not too shabby for a man that literally grew up dirt poor.

I knew a Soldier with a 32 ACT (yes, I double checked as that's a great score) from East St Louis. Guidance counselors and everything else failed them, so they joined the mil.

How that kid (making an adult's decision by joining) wasn't scooped up by basically anyone other than their local recruiter blew my mind. If you spend some time around the military jobs that require smarts, these stories are very common. The non-high test score jobs tend to be staffed by very solid and smart people who just didn't have many other options at the time.

Soldiers from enlisted to General can and often are idiots and by glorifying them one risks the same risk as glorifying a professional athlete or any other symbol, but in aggregate the above story is common.

I was kind of like that. 30 ACT, barely graduated high school, joined the Marine Corps and chose infantry.

It's rare that survivorship bias gets to be used quite so literally.

Nearly 300,000 families also had their trajectories changed because their loved ones died.

The military as a class on-ramp disproportionately harms the poor, and ethically that's wrong. It's almost literally a lottery where you're gambling your life in exchange for basic needs.

Is that wrong-ness the responsibility of the military, or that of our govt/"society" not bothering to offer anything else as capable?

It's the responsibility of the government and by extension, the military. I suppose you could blame society at-large because we elect our representatives, but the majority of Americans already support single-payer healthcare and free or reduced college tuition.

It's disturbing to me that it's normal to concentrate efforts on recruiting poor teenagers to fight wars. The focus on the poor also has the effect of disproportionately impacting minorities.

Even if you survive, over the past decade hundreds of thousands of veterans have ended up with PTSD and even then they're left to fight for proper treatment under the VA. The VA has been failing veterans for decades and in some cases causes additional harm, including using experimental and ineffective treatment for covid while under their care (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7276049/).

Guess I'm unclear what policy you think the military could do. Not recruit?

Specifically abandon recruiting methods that target the poor would be a start.

unless you know recruiters personally and have more than an anecdotal example or policy to share, that specific targeting, especially in terms of a policy, doesn't happen but yes recruiters will go to the high schools in poor areas.

Americans may claim that they support healthcare or education reform in the abstract, but they don't actually vote that way. Most people aren't willing to voluntarily pay higher taxes or cut other programs in order to actually implement those policies.

I'd like the government to give me all sorts of stuff for free as long as someone else is paying.

We're all already paying for it through health insurance companies, who are siphoning off huge profits.

Unless you're living off-grid the government already gives you mountains of "free" stuff paid for by taxes! It's an enormously long list of utilities and services that contains everything from fire departments to food safety. Mostly things that shouldn't be profit centers.

> Nearly 300,000 families also had their trajectories changed because their loved ones died.

What are you referring to here? 300,000 is a specific number and you qualify it with "because their loved ones died". Let's assume you're talking about active military deaths, which are less than 100,000 since 1945 [1], the vast majority of which is Vietnam and Korea.

Up until the Vietnam War, the draft was a significant factor. That's not really a factor because you have no control over it.

You'll also note that my comment was specifically about the Air Force Guard and Reserve. Your chances of getting deployed to a war zone and dying are incredibly low and so many roles aren't active combat anyway. Unlike active service you enlist ofr a particular job. If you sign up to do logistics in Ohio. your risks are pretty low.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...

The military mostly recruits from the middle class now. Unfortunately, poor people often can't meet the eligibility requirements due to medical problems (especially obesity), poor fitness, criminal record, history of drug use, lack of a high school diploma, or low test scores. Of course there are exceptions but relatively few. The modern military is pretty selective in whom they take.

Many years ago my uncle got in minor trouble with the law as a young man. The judge gave him a choice: join the Navy or go to jail. The Navy worked out pretty well for him, but today he probably wouldn't even have that option to get his life back on track.

> Locally evaluated, it's a good option.

Locally evaluated, it's a rational option. But I think you're going to lose a lot of people by framing it as "good". Rational decisions are not always good ones, and vice versa.

Military service should be done because you want to serve your country or because war. It shouldn't be a convenient option to escape poverty.

Do you think homeless shelters and food stamps are a positive? It's clearly a tragedy that we need them, but I'd say they are very clearly a positive.

I don't think gambling with your life is a requirement to get on food stamps though?

You’re just complaining. The world exists as it does now and broad generalized complaints like yours are often used to support positions which actively harm those you purport to help.

Say we take away the military on-ramp to class mobility. What can we do for those trapped in poverty whose only ticket out was enlistment? Your answer should be focused on what we can practically do as the world stands now, not in your fictional utopia where militaries aren’t necessary and education is free. The military is offering “good” and you’re looking for “perfect.” We all know the saying.

Things don't get better if you don't complain. All of my siblings have come back from military service (marines, army rangers, navy) worse off, and the benefits in no way compensate them for what they lost. I recommend it to no one. The best military service is the service you did not perform. The VA is notorious for being terrible. The US has non profits for wounded/disabled veterans because care and support (most importantly around mental health) the government should be providing isn't. Since 2001, more than 114,000 veterans have died by suicide [1] [2]. Over 40,000 veterans are homeless on any given night [1]. This is a pipeline problem; stop putting people into the pipeline.

I max out my contributions to progressives, similar PACs, and canvass door to door at every election I can for those who champion for these public goods (healthcare, education) to be universal. I'm doing my part to sway anyone I can from putting themselves through a grinder for services they should be entitled to without military service. Yes, the world sucks current state, and yes, I agree whole heartedly that complaining is not enough.

[1] https://stopsoldiersuicide.org/vet-stats ("Veterans are at 50% higher risk of suicide than their peers who have not served." ; "Depending on branch, up to 31% of service members develop PTSD after returning from combat." ; "The rate of suicide for veterans in the LGBTQ+ community is up to 7x higher than for non-LGBTQ+ veterans." ; "More than 40% of female veterans report experiencing military sexual harassment or military sexual trauma.")

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/us/911-suicide-rate-veter... ("Suicides among post-9/11 veterans are four times as high as combat deaths, a new study finds.")

The military is no picnic and it’s no savior. It’s not billed as a day spa and the people who join up are without question taken advantage of. It’s hard on many families, including mine and yours apparently. Support isn’t there once you’re out. Support probably isn’t there while you’re in either.

But there’s nowhere else to go for someone stuck in the cycle of poverty. They don’t have money. They go to one of the few places that still recognizes that cash isn’t the only currency the young have to give and offer their bodies and lives. If you’re just as likely to get shot in the streets of Chicago as overseas, well you might as well get your tuition paid for.

The groups you support (progressives, similar PACs, politicians) have recently started telling the world about how poverty is systemic and how useless poor people’s actions are in the face of such a fucked up system, so how can you sit here and tell me that these people need to find a new way to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps while taking away their army issued boots?

> The groups you support (progressives, similar PACs, politicians) have recently started telling the world about how poverty is systemic and how useless their actions are in the face of such a fucked up system, so how can you sit here and tell me that these people need to find a way to pull themselves by their own bootstraps while taking away their army issued boots?

Much easier to get out of poverty with universal healthcare and subsidized education versus going to the sandbox and coming back with PTSD just to get your GI Bill and Tricare. Don't tell me it isn't affordable, the productivity and wealth demonstrably exists. The system chooses cannon fodder over plowshares. It is very easy to sit here and tell you this with every other OECD country providing models to crib off of.

> Much easier to get out of poverty with universal healthcare and subsidized education

Isn't that the case though? Medicaid provides great healthcare for those in the lower income brackets (my family used it for the majority of my childhood years) and most colleges are basically free (community college and some state schools will actually pay you).

I don't think the ability to pay for education or healthcare is really the reason for poverty here.

Establish the other pipeline out of poverty then come after the military. Or, alternatively, establish the other pipeline and let the government compete for young people. Don’t just try to fuck poor people by taking their options away and then promising that a different option is “coming.”

Sounds like your siblings had tough deployments or unit issues, which is certainly a thing and the ugly side of the tradeoff of service.

But, most of what you point out is a veteran issue, and I 100% agree, but that's not the military's fault, its the VA and the executive/legislative branch.

Arguably no branch of the government is more invested in a strong veteran support network than the military itself, as the dynamic you point out is well known, and keeps people from service for probably good reasons.

What are the services people should be entitled to and who should pay for it? I am just curious how this works.

We already pay for most of those services, it's just that right now, we often get to pay twice for them, in both the upfront dollar cost, and all the non-dollar suffering that untreated medical issues, chronic homelessness, and generational crime cause.

I thought it is healthcare, education (enumerated) and maybe others. Now I am even more confused.

> What can we do for those trapped in poverty whose only ticket out was enlistment?

You just give them the fucking food, education, and healthcare. Look at the current US military budget and tell me that's impossible.

The military is not offering "good" — it's offering the roll of a dice. Sure, one side says "good" but you've got a "death" side too. Wealthy people do not have to roll this dice at all.

The majority of our lives has featured a "war" almost entirely based on false pretenses. Thousands of soldiers died. Do you think their families were happy about having this on-ramp to class mobility?

I had recruiters coming to my house and deriding my living conditions to get me to enlist when I was 17. It's predatory, abhorrent, and not even remotely "good."

> You just give them the fucking food, education, and healthcare. Look at the current US military budget and tell me that's impossible.

It’s impossible.

Here is some analysis:

https://hwfo.substack.com/p/peace-in-ukraine-and-universal-h...

This almost entirely ignores the phenomenon of insurance companies inflating healthcare costs and making incredibly large profits. Health insurance industry profits ($31bn in 2020) are almost equivalent to what your link says the entire military expenditure for the European theater is ($35bn in 2018).

Not to mention the bureaucratic, political, and productivity costs plus the costs to employers and what individuals pay out of pocket.

>It’s impossible.

Nothing is impossible. Well, except certain classes of time travel into the past.

Higher education funded through government spending is not a utopia, it already exists in many places and would not be prohibitively expensive for the United States if there was a will.

Try it first, then compare. I had free college, it was mostly a waste of time for everyone. It was not a bad college, it was the best in the country, the others were worse.

In many cases you get what you pay for. In my case it was approximately zero. From what I hear from new hires, the quality these days it's worse, they are mostly diploma factories.

Plenty of developed countries have compulsory military service (South Korea, Israel, Switzerland). If anything, we're lucky that it's a choice.

A quick search determined that at least in Switzerland and South Korea, there is an avenue for conscientious objection, so I wouldn't say that "military service" is mandatory there. Even in Israel there seem to be plenty of options to get around military service.

I recommend the Wikipedia articles about "Conscription in <insert country here>".

In both South Korea and Switzerland you’d still be required to do civilian service in lieu of military service.

True, that wouldn't be "compulsory military service" though imo.

It is compulsory, but with exceptions. Defining something by the outliers just messes with the language of things :)

"The exception that proves the rule"

In this example though, it would be like arguing the taxes are optional. :)

There are four relevant categories:

a) People conscripted to serve in the military.

b) People who choose civilian service to avoid military service.

c) Conscientious objectors who go to prison instead of serving.

d) People who could be conscripted but somehow manage to avoid serving.

From my Finnish perspective, "mandatory military service" means that the ratio (a + b + c) / d is high. Civilian service does not exist because the country wants to use slave labor instead of paid labor, but because it's socially more acceptable than imprisoning people who refuse to serve in the military.

The US military is largely a blue-collar jobs program that lets you opt in to service in exchange for something resembling standard European social benefits (retirement, healthcare, housing, education). Which sucks for a bunch of reasons, including that some are excluded from eligibility, but it's what we've got. That's obviously not the whole reason we have a military, or even close to it, but it's become a big part of its role in society.

As far as I can tell, the closest we have to a white-collar jobs program is the health insurance industry and insurance-related jobs elsewhere. Keeping millions employed while being a drag on the rest of the economy.

Universal healthcare or free college education would lower Army recruitment for sure.

It's nuts that some people have to consider joining the military to be able to pay for tuition and/or to get health care. I have nothing to contribute other than expressing how soul crushing this seems for someone outside the US.

> It is a tragedy that these services (education, healthcare) are difficult to obtain without military service in a supposedly developed country.

Don't be silly. Education is not difficult to obtain without military service.

Is education difficult to obtain? America is the #6th most educated country in the world, when viewed from the perspective as percentage of population having at least some tertiary schooling:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/the-10-most-educated-countri...

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SLOAS

https://hbr.org/2019/09/what-will-it-take-to-solve-the-stude...

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Debt-Trap/Josh-Mi...

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/01/1089750113/student-loan-debt-...

People having a lot of student loan debt doesn't imply that education is hard to obtain. Having a low percentage of your population with tertiary degrees would show that. But that is not the case in the US.

> "difficult to obtain without military service"

This is factually incorrect - you literally can get $400k in education of your choosing at the tender age of 18, which is why we frequently discus articles revolving around student debt for degrees that don't pay anything. There isn't anything even remotely equivalent when it comes to money access of this sort (try getting a $400k mortgage with zero income and zero assets )

You can get mortgage of 400k USD, what a great thing to get when entering 18... Sorry guys but this is so fucked up from European point of view. And that poor people are pushed to enlist to kill innocent folks half around the globe just to be able to study is yet another level of fuckery.

But at least you guys get some semi-decent medical insurance to live like a human being. For which we also don't need to pay (or very little bulk sum with hard ceiling). Something about basic human rights, future of our race and all.

European here as well; I suspect you misunderstood: Getting college loans in the US is absolutely trivial and the amount of money you can have access to is objectively preposterous. Any notion that the only way to get access to education is by joining the military is patently wrong.

> "we also don't need to pay"

You certainly are paying, sir.

Last time I checked most the best human rights had to be fought for and defended at some point. Stop taking for granted what was paid for in blood by your predecessors and being all sanctimonious about what are "basic human rights" it makes you sound like a spoiled child.

Your healthcare isn't a human right, is is a benefit you collectively decided to pay for. Others can make different decisions.

As a European you should be glad the US has a competent military since you’re clearly not up to job yourself.

> This isn't a positive

It's a silver lining. It's shameful that the need exists at all, but it's definitely a positive for the people who are getting mostly screwed by the status quo but would otherwise be getting completely screwed.

I really hate this kind of argument because it's an argument that springs from privilege and entitlement.

We can sit around and say that education should be free and accessible and that would be nice but it's not the world we live in. The fact of the matter is that life isn't fair and some people get substantially better or worse starting hands.

Yet you would seemingly rather remove opportunities from those with the fewest options because of how the government chooses to use the military.

It's pretty easy to say that others with fewer options than you should make sacrifices that that are at best symbolic when it requires no such sacrifice from you.

What are you doing to effect change? I guarantee you that influencing the government that sets policy is going to be a whole lot more effective than a few disadvantaged people sitting out a Reserve program where they might otherwise just be doing admin work.

Wait until you hear about all the developed countries that have compulsory service for everyone. (every male at least)

Do they have functioning educational and healthcare systems?

Yes, you just have to serve in the military to fulfill your duties as a citizen in order to access them.

I will have to better qualify what a developed country is in the future. Mandatory military service directly contradicts a citizen’s freedom.

Being a part of a society means not only freedoms, but responsibilities. You're responsible for following the law. You're responsible for paying taxes (you know, those things that pay for all the free stuff you're demanding) and sometimes you're responsible for defending the country that guarantees you those freedoms.

The US has a large population and is able to field a military with only volunteers (at the moment. This wasn't always the case, and the draft can be reinstated if necessary). Smaller countries would not be able to have a military at all without mandatory service. Their freedoms would be moot if they were invaded and conquered.

Demanding freedom and shirking responsibility is the act of a child.

Reservists have normal jobs since they only report a few weekends plus 2 weeks a year.

People who can’t afford college or healthcare ain’t going into the reserves to get it.

>You also get medical and dental insurance.

This reminds me of a point Michael Moore made in Sicko – that Americans are generally fine with government spending if it's directed at the military. As he put it, America could probably have a national health service as long as the doctors and nurses wore camo.

It's a pretty lame point. We're fine with spending on members of the military because, at any point, they may have to put their lives on the line for the rest of us. National defense isn't something you can prepare for after you need it.

There are valid arguments to be made for society banding together and providing health care for everyone. "but the military gets it" isn't one of them.

It's always funny to call it "defense" spending when so much of it goes to wars of aggression.

Still though, government-provided medical insurance is accepted as a perk in this context, where as in other contexts, many Americans express extreme skepticism about the concept.

In this context, the government is the employer. Why are you treating it like a different one?

"We'll fill those cavities (aka teeth terrorists) full of lead!"

IIRC, Bill O'Reilly wrote about this idea while he was getting his MPA from Harvard. Create a universal national health service run by the Surgeon General where all the doctors wore military uniforms. This would radically reduce any big government scare messaging from financial conservatives.

> I'm happy things like this exist to at least give people more options.

Risking getting killed and having to kill people to pay for your education and being happy about it is up there in the list of "only in America"

> As ridiculous as the US college system is in terms of cost, I'm happy things like this exist to at least give people more options.

The only people I want in an army are those who have freely and independently chosen to join the army and who have been psychologically and physically checked to be fit for service. The motivation of a soldier should exclusively be to serve their country, not financial or status (e.g. citizenship) gain.

People who have "chosen" because they have no other perspective to rise in life later-on should they survive their service or because they were pressured to do so by their family or friends have no place in the armed forces.

An army should strive for excellence - Putin's troops are the current showcase for entire generations to see what happens otherwise.

‘ The motivation of a soldier should exclusively be to serve their country, not financial or status (e.g. citizenship) gain.’

No successful professional military has ever worked like this. Basically you want a an army comprised mainly of fanatical nationalists whose only purpose is to ‘serve their country’ (whatever that means). Hate it to break it to you but such a force would more closely resemble the Waffen SS, rather than the citizen militias of colonial America or ancient Greece. A modern professional military should mainly made up from balanced and educated professionals to be effective. People like this usually have other choices in life and thus need certain incentives to join. Not saying serving you country shouldn’t be a part of it, but for most such people that alone is not enough.

For that you either need to decrease the general size of the army dramatically or find other ways of ‘motivating’ new recruits to ‘join’. The second options has not historically resulted in anything resembling ‘ excellence’ outside of ultra-militaristic, jingoist societies.

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