Fed and Mr.D, you both make good points... allow me to retort.
Those Americans are bitter.
They cling to
their guns and
their religion, with antipathy for those who are not like
them... Wait.. Thats Obama's speech, I'd better use my own:
You guys are both ex-military... did you ever have to deal with some chicken shat and curse the fact you were stuck with it? With our relatively small military, we have relatively small levels of corruption and relatively few incidents of conduct unbecoming of a US soldier...
I see that as being multiplied exponentially by compulsory service in a nation of over 300 million. It works for Israel and their population of 7 and a quarter million inhabitants but we do a great deal to subsidize them and its just not fiscally possible for the US.
Israel has roughly 170,000 active servicemen at any given time under their compulsory service, thats about 2.5% of their population, and an additional 400,000 in reserve - another 5.5% of their population. I'll apply those percentages to our population:
Right now we have about 1.5 million active and another 1.5 million on reserve and our DEFENSE budget takes up 21% (All defense, not just military) of the total Federal Budget. Under compulsory service, and expecting the same general numbers the Israeli's garner, we would have 7.5 million active and an additional 16.5 million in reserve... I can only
imagine what impact that would have on our already failing budget.
And that doesn't even touch all the veterans benefits, hospitals, college programs etc which would also grow exponentially with our military.
This may sound shocking but hear me out... we keep the volunteer military. We end things like GI bills and ALL other Veteran programs/benefits. That would free up roughly 80 BILLION dollars from the budget... A year.
Now remember under our current volunteer system we have 1.5 million active and 1.5 million reserve. We give them all a considerable pay raise:
80,000,000,000 (80 billion)
divided by
3,000,000
Nets each serviceman an additional
$26,666.00 per year, after completing your first year, on top of their respective pay grade salaries, and its tax free.
From what I could find about current pay grades, the E-1's earn roughly $1350/ month or $16,200/ year. The lowest level of pay, after finishing the first year, would now pay roughly 42,800/yr... I think it would be a big incentive to join the military and make it a far more appealing career choice.
I also think vets, even 2 year vets, would be able to pay for their own college... even provide for their own healthcare (we'd still have all the other programs like medicare and medicaid)... and basically be better off utilizing non-governmental services, which they can now afford, and should they fall on hard times, they can still rely on existing government social safety net programs.
Mr.D, sorry to go off topic there... I promise I'll get around to Paul eventually