Some in the former president’s camp say it’s time more young adults put “some skin in the game.”
JD Vance appears to be in on requiring the kids of non-billionaires to serve in the military too:
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a potential Trump running mate, said in an interview that he sees a clear need for measures to boost participation. “I like the idea of national service. And I’m not talking about in wartime,” he said, calling for more Americans to put “some skin in the game.”
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Will Baron go or will he dodge it like daddy?
Mah spurs! They hurt!
Barron likely will not go.
Yes?
“WHY DO THEY ALWAYS SEND THE POOOOOR”
Where the fuck are you?
Why don’t presidents fight the war?
Why do they always send the poor?
Why do they always send the poor?
Ah yes, slavery.
Just in case anyone doesn’t know: the main supreme court case about conscription basically had the decision of “But Mom! All the other countries do it!”
It would be far from “slavery” in the typical sense.
If this happened, those people would get food, housing, healthcare and job training while getting paid for it.
Though I’m definitely not in favor of conscription because how can you call yourself free if you’re required to do involuntary military work for the government.
You think slaves weren’t fed?
Yeah, the comment just made 0 sense; Slaves got free food, lodging and Healthcare all the way back to biblical times. They also got a free dating service so the master could keep them forever.
I’ll add to that, they also got free “education” to learn skills needed for their “job” and how to adress their “superiors”.
Let the Trump advisors go first.
Stop sending young men to die for profits them and their families will never see. We see through the facade.
Hmmmm….Fortunate Son plays softly in the background.
“It Aint Me”
– DJT
I remember when Obama suggested mandatory civil service. Not necessarily military but local government or parks. Doing some local community work. I thought that was a great idea.
Having mandatory military is dumb. I was in for a few enlistments and you don’t want someone forced to be there when people’s lives are on the line. Vietnam ended up with a bunch of officers getting fragged by disgruntled draftees.
I think it would be a great way to nearly eradicate unemployment and justify free college/trade school until we can force UBI down politicians’ throats.
I think some kind of public service is potentially good but you have to sort out your incentive structure first. Otherwise all those extra workers just end up being the only workers.
for what? the wars they plan to start?
For that, and because when you’re in the military, you don’t have the same right to free expression.
The U.S. military has been yet another way religion and in particular Christianity has been forced upon folks.
Yes, probably. But a larger military means more money piped into the military budget, even in peacetime, if there ever is such a thing again. And a larger budget means more money funneled into the military industrial teat for the GOP and their donors to suckle off of.
A lot of misogynists like to throw out how ‘women don’t have to suffer the draft’ (like we’ve even had one of those in forever). So if it’s just for men, probably giving that old tired jaw teeth again?
We still have mandatory registration for selective service, it’s only for men, and feminist groups like the national organization of women believe it should be expended to I clude women or eliminated because it’s sexist
That’s a really roundabout way of socialising healthcare.
Service Guarantees Healthcare. Do you want to know more?
First lest see trump’s service record…
Ah yes, the famous draft dodger that will disinherit his children if they join the armed forces.
That’s the worst idea I’ve heard on so many levels.
Drafting people is immoral.
Also, it’s politically stupid because the draft is just… Extremely unpopular. Universal mandatory service will be radically less popular.
Then, you’re filling the military with a bunch of people who don’t want to be there. Suddenly a sizable portion of the US military is composed of new recruits who don’t want to be there. If only half the people who come up for mandatory service actually get drafted, that’s still more people than are currently in the US military. This will do wonders for effectiveness and morale.
Finally, once they get out, you have an insane amount of GI bill benefits to pay out, to say nothing of the long term VA costs that come from more than doubling the size of the military. (Potentially up to a 10x increase, assuming four year term of service and roughly 4M 18 year olds per year).
Or you can change the law to deny GI bill benefits to draftees, which is definitely going to be popular with the people whose life you’re stealing.I suppose “draft everyone” is technically a way to give everyone subsidized college education and universal healthcare, but I think there’s better ways.
Just the dumbest possible people.
As if they would actually pay out on the GI bill. I’ve known more than a few that gets screwed over over stupid technicalities or paperwork. The fact is the US government does not give a shit about vets and that’s a sad thing
Then, you’re filling the military with a bunch of people who don’t want to be there. Suddenly a sizable portion of the US military is composed of new recruits who don’t want to be there. If only half the people who come up for mandatory service actually get drafted, that’s still more people than are currently in the US military. This will do *wonders* for effectiveness and morale.
A gift for Papa Putin, you say?
Mandatory Patriotism™
You sure you want a military-trained proletariat Trump?
Alternatively, would teaching all his red neck lackeys how to use guns more responsibly and effectively be a good thing or a bad thing?
I guess they would be slightly less likely to shoot themselves in the nuts accidentally. But they would also be more effective in murdering more Innocent folks when they have one of their conspiracy-fueled mental health crises.
Ozzy summed it up well:
Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor
Okay, let’s thinks some of this through.
measures to remedy what they see as a “crisis” facing the all-volunteer military.
This is accurate. All branches of the military are having problems meeting their recruiting requirements, because kids in general in the US are no longer fit enough to make it into basic training in the first place. So while there are enough raw people that have the mental aptitude that are trying to get in–but just barely–so many of them are unable to meet the physical requirements that the military lacks the personnel that it needs.
He described the concept as a common “rite of passage,” one that would create a sense of “shared sacrifice” among America’s youth.
Okay, yes. This is potentially correct. However, you’re also going to see a lot of resentment. So perhaps you won’t see the esprit de corps that you might want.
he says leads to “unnecessary delays” and “unwarranted rejections” for some people with disabilities or other conditions who otherwise want to serve.
I was one of those people that might have been an “unwarranted rejection”; I scored quite high on the ASVAB at the time (I think 96th percentile in the mid 90s), but was disqualified because I was on Prozac. Now I would be disqualified because I’m on the autism spectrum. (I was then too, but hadn’t been diagnosed.) I might have done well in the military. I might have hated it. But I never got the chance to find out.
Only 1 percent of the U.S. population serves in the armed forces, Army data shows.
Okay, see, here’s a huge problem. Mandatory military service would mean expanding the military by 100x. Even if you only served 18 months or 2 years as a conscript, that’s an ENORMOUS amount of money that has to be spent by the gov’t feeding, housing, clothing, training, providing healthcare, and paying (since you kinda gotta pay the troops) for so goddamn many people, and that assumes that they entirely cut all post-separation benefits for anyone that is conscripted (e.g., no VA for people that become disabled, no GI Bill, etc.) The infrastructure spending alone for that, and the number of new bases that would need to be built, is staggering. Right now we spend 3.5% of our GDP on the military. Even if we went low-tech for all the soldiers that were conscripted, you could expect to see that number triple, easily. That means that you’re either doing massive deficit spending, cutting everything else that taxes are spent on, or raising taxes by a lot.
expanding the military by 100x
Send massive amounts of money to defense contractors…
entirely cut all post-separation benefits for anyone that is conscripted
without any future liability obligations…
you could expect to see that number triple, easily
and leaving tons of room to grift…
cutting everything else that taxes are spent on
all while also getting to fuck over the poors?
Somewhere, a senator just spontaneously jizzed his pants.
all while also getting to fuck over the poors?
Not just the poors though. You’d have to cut infrastructure spending, Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare, criminal justice, food and drug administration (you know, the people that make sure food is safe?), everything that makes our country more or less functional. This isn’t something that the 1% would be fine with; it’s more like the .1%, or .01%, because even most of the very wealthy people would end up getting badly fucked by the kind of cuts you would need to have in order to add that many people to the military without instituting oppressive taxes.
I think that saying that the current military budget would triple if there was mandatory conscription is actually being incredibly conservative. If you look at military spending as a percentage of GDP when the US last had something even in the same county as mandatory conscription–World War II–the US was spending over 40% of the GDP on the military.
I can’t imagine most people in the US being okay with that kind of loss of necessary gov’t function combined with insanely high taxes unless the US was also involved in an existential war.
