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Ahtman wrote:

CptJake wrote: punish the political class.

Politician isn't a class. If you mean Upper Class and Rich, of which most politicians are, then yes.

CptJake wrote:If you had a truly 'fair' draft, people world be forced into service in proportion to their representation in the over all population.

That is a ridiculous. I'm not even sure how one comes up with that as a definition of fairness.

What is your definition of fair? In mine, if you have an army of 100 people and a popualtion of 1000, the 100 would be representative of the 1000. If 10 of the 1,000 were your 'rich', I would expect 1 of the 100 to be from the 'rich'. Look at the charts I posted. The upper class is already more represented than the lower class. To be fair, the lower class would have to be compelled to serve in a much greater proportion than they currently do.

Do you see compelled service as a way to punish a class of person? I am very much opposed to that. If you don't see it that way, what is your intent for forced service? I'm honestly curious.

CptJake,
Interesting charts, I had no idea the military fairly well represented in the middle and upper class. I also resonate with your ideals of instilling the value of service in one's children, whether it be military, social, govt, etc.

I do disagree though your charts and their division of what is "middle class". Not surprising since the charts are created by the "Heritige Foundation" an uber-conservative organization beloved by Rush and Hannity! Interesting that the differences are all in percentages of around 2% or less, which any statistician will tell you is statistically insignificant and well within the "margin of error".

I've dealt a bit with median incomes and the actuality of poverty in my previous employment. While it's by no means the cutoff for poverty, a solidly middle class is much more accurately placed at the 50k per family rather than the 40k that the charts above portray. Moving the middle class line over to 50 knocks two of the bar graph segments down and changes the numbers significantly.

The Govt has a very screwed up mesure of povery , mostly since it reflects ratios of food expenses to housing expenses from the 60's and not current realities. Of course the difficulty in getting any elected official to fix that standard when would make it look like more people "became poor" on their watch explains pretty clearly why we still have the measure we do.

CptJake wrote:And again, if you DON'T think so, vote for the politician that supports what you want done or call/write your current rep and voice your opinion, and get others to do the same.

No such politician runs for office.

Sure, they talk a big deal, but they never actually do it.

Especially nowadays with all the politicians who used to be in bed with the military now instead deciding they want to have a tea party.

CptJake wrote:What is your definition of fair?

If you are talking about pressing adults of a certain age into service you would, you take people of that age regardless of economic station. I suppose the irony of your sense of fairness is that it would be anything but fair, as it makes it less about citizens being called to duty and more about economic factors. Are you between 18-30? Hey guess what, you get some free training. Or at best a blind lottery so that the decisions aren't based on political and economic factors.

CptJake wrote:Do you see compelled service as a way to punish a class of person?

You keep using the word 'class' in such a way to make me think you really don't understand what it means. I don't think national service is a punishment generally speaking, assuming it is blind to anything other than the nationality and health of the person. If you start trying to base it on things like (parent's) income brackets or (parent's) employment then I think you start running into problems.

CptJake wrote:I guess I am old school in that I feel parents ought to instill a sense of service in their kids.

There's a difference between believing that parents ought to be good parents and believing that they will be.

Matt you pansy RM .. fancy a beer ?

Ahtman wrote:

CptJake wrote:What is your definition of fair?

If you are talking about pressing adults of a certain age into service you would, you take people of that age regardless of economic station. I suppose the irony of your sense of fairness is that it would be anything but fair, as it makes it less about citizens being called to duty and more about economic factors. Are you between 18-30? Hey guess what, you get some free training. Or at best a blind lottery so that the decisions aren't based on political and economic factors.

CptJake wrote:Do you see compelled service as a way to punish a class of person?

You keep using the word 'class' in such a way to make me think you really don't understand what it means. I don't think national service is a punishment generally speaking, assuming it is blind to anything other than the nationality and health of the person. If you start trying to base it on things like (parent's) income brackets or (parent's) employment then I think you start running into problems.

In your 'blind lottery' IF it was done fairly, as in every one had an equal chance of getting picked, my example is spot on. Take a basic statistics class. More poor people would serve than do now, less middle and upper class would serve than do now, because when every one has an equal chance, the population picked would end up very closely mirroring the population picked from. Right now, as the charts I posted show, the population that actually serves does not mirror the US population, the middle and upper income people are over represented and the lower income are under represented. In a truly random draw, where every one has an equal chance of being picked, that would not be the case. Period. In a truly random and fair draft, the results again, should mirror the population they are drawn from.

Of course then you would have other issues. To serve right now you MUST meet certain physical, educational, pshychological criteria and must NOT have engaged and been caught in certain criminal behaviors. Assuming you maintain those standards, your Random Every One's Chance Is Equal goes out the window. If fat boy, or dope smoker, or convicted of a crime, or ADHD sufferer gets picked, they are disqualified from serving. So the actual elgible population shrinks quite a bit.

The armed service in the US is too small a percent of the population to force everyone between 18-30 to even be trained let alone actually serve, so I am not sure what you meant by that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melissia wrote:

CptJake wrote:I guess I am old school in that I feel parents ought to instill a sense of service in their kids.

There's a difference between believing that parents ought to be good parents and believing that they will be.

I don't disagree with that at all. Which is why I also stated in the same post:

Sometimes I feel respect for country is actively discouraged, but that is another topic.

CptJake wrote:Take a basic statistics class.

Considering your poor argument, that is a bit of an odd thing to say as well as inappropriate. Fairness, which is a fools errand at best, is not about matching arbitrarily chosen qualifiers. You aren't convincing, and your position is still fairly naive.

Read my example, and try to understand what I am saying. If you take a random number of a larger population, be it colored beads or people, statistically the group chosen will closely mirror the larger population in the proportions of its make up.

If I have 1,000 beads, 900 which are red and 100 which are blue and randomly pick out 100, I should end up with about 90 red and 10 blue.

Same with people. If I randomly pick X people from a population of Y(X), my group of X should have a simialr ratio of the population that makes up Y(X). That can be based on race, economic standing, hair or eye color. left vice right handedness, what ever.

If you are NOT randomly selecting, what is your method you consider fair?

Why is my arguement poor. What have I stated incorrectly?

And again, what is your criteria of 'fair'? How do you choose who you want to make serve in the military?

CptJake wrote:Read my example, and try to understand what I am saying. If you take a random number of a larger population, be it colored beads or people, statistically the group chosen will closely mirror the larger population in the proportions of its make up.

In a theoretical vacuum that is generally true, though you are still constrained by you ability to approach a random sample. This means not only randomizing the selection process, but randomizing the encoding of all relevant coded units with selectable variables. In other words, you can't just take a list of people, number them alphabetically, and then select using a random number generator. If you want a true random sample you have randomly generate individual units to be coded, and a variable to code them with; and the procedures use to generate either cannot be the same as either each other, or the selecting procedure.

Its really tedious, and really complicated, especially in terms of generating each procedure.

CptJake wrote:
If I have 1,000 beads, 900 which are red and 100 which are blue and randomly pick out 100, I should end up with about 90 red and 10 blue.

If you can select them at random, yes, but that's actually pretty difficult. For example, if you're blindly pulling blue beads out of a hat, and most of the blue beads happen to be near the top, the probability of selecting a blue bead increases relative to the actual composition of the population.

This is just an example of course, but the point is, as above, that randomization is not only hard, in theory, but even harder in practice. The procedure I outline above isn't even used by the AMES database because its would be ridiculously expensive over a population of ~35 million (basically, males 18-35) and even then you'll end up with a sample that isn't representative of the larger US population.

Anyway, the issue is that the notion of a "fair draft" is closer to "what the government can get away with" than "what is statistically fair", which has been demonstrated throughout history.

I don't disagree. I'm just trying to point out that the folks who want to draft the kids of the rich would have to accept that the kids of the poor are going to also be elgible to be drafted. And because there are more poor kids currently choosing not to serve in proportion to the number of poor kids in the country, you will see an increase of poor kids serving via a draft than you do today in a volunteer force. I strongly suspect that those who advocate a draft do not realize that, or would choose to manipulate the draft in some way to keep that from happening.

Right now serving is a choice. Which, in my opinion, is what it should be. You can look at percentages of the population in various ways to see who actually enlists (say by economic bracket or race for example). There seems to be a misperception that this group called 'the rich' or 'the kids of politicians' don't pull thier 'fair' share, or that they are under represented. That just isn't true at this point.

Compelling folks to serve who do not want to, again, in my opinion, hurts the military. I'm against that. When I see that the reason given tends to be what amounts to 'force this group in as punishment', it frankly disgusts me, especially when you actually look at the numbers and see that, for example, out of 535 members of congress, 121 are military veterans, and several have children on active duty (as of 2007 at least 9 had kids who served in Iraq, the number has risen since then but I can't pin it down).

Right now, folks join who want to join. That is good. There has not been a problem getting kids to enlist. Interestingly, amongst combat units, re-enlistments are at historical highs.

When folks claim that who is serving is somehow not 'fair' but then will not define 'fair' I think that is crap. Generally the folks who claim it is not 'fair' do not have an accurate idea of who is actually serving. Again, I think that is crap.

I never argued a perfectly random way to draft troops could be implemented, I argued that it would be what I consider 'fair'. I also pointed out some of the consequences of that (more poor would serve than do now).

I don't think a draft is politically possible in our country at this point, and I am glad of that.

But again, when someone complains that the current demographic make up of our troopers is somehow not 'fair' to some group, I call BS.

From speaking to friends in and retired from the ADF they are treated and compensated quite fairly.

CptJake wrote:

I don't think a draft is politically possible in our country at this point, and I am glad of that.

It isn't. Imagine the outcry from parents when there 18 year old daughter gets drafted. Image trying to go into the ghetto (Much worse than it was during the Vietnam drafts) and trying to force gangsters to serve.

The military in America isn't in a bad place as far as who joins up. Right now it's primarily people who either want to serve their country or realize that it can be a relatively easy and steady paycheck (depending on your MoS).

CptJake wrote:
But again, when someone complains that the current demographic make up of our troopers is somehow not 'fair' to some group, I call BS.

I think most arguments to that effect deal with demographic variance across MOSs. For example, I recall that Blacks and Hispanics were significantly more likely to serve in combat roles than Whites, though I don't remember if that controlled for poverty and AVSB scores.

Everyone knows a conscript army is fairly useless in terms of moral and teamwork anyway. Your more likely to get the job done with 50 voluteers then 100 people who don't want to be there.

But then again I look at some of the youth running around and start to think National service would be a better option, mainly just to keep them off the street. Anyway a wise soldier once said to me that the US army is there to seperate the insane out of society and keep them occupied with a rifle.

Private_Joker wrote:Everyone knows a conscript army is fairly useless in terms of moral and teamwork anyway. Your more likely to get the job done with 50 voluteers then 100 people who don't want to be there.

But then again I look at some of the youth running around and start to think National service would be a better option, mainly just to keep them off the street. Anyway a wise soldier once said to me that the US army is there to seperate the insane out of society and keep them occupied with a rifle.

Whoever told you that was an idiot. The last thing we need is nut jobs in the military. Civilians don't understand how PC the military has gotten... If you are a whacko you will be filtered out.

dogma wrote:

CptJake wrote:
But again, when someone complains that the current demographic make up of our troopers is somehow not 'fair' to some group, I call BS.

I think most arguments to that effect deal with demographic variance across MOSs. For example, I recall that Blacks and Hispanics were significantly more likely to serve in combat roles than Whites, though I don't remember if that controlled for poverty and AVSB scores.

Absolutely wrong, in the specially case of blacks. Even during the Vietnam War, only 34% of blacks who enlisted enlisted in Combat Arms. Combat Arms, infantry and Armor in particular, are very, very short on black soldiers and officers, who tend to go towards support branches.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA402652 Note that in that paper he does not differentiate bretween Infantry and Armor and Air Defense Artillery. If you did that, the numbers are even worse.

Though that is about officers, it holds true for enlisted. In fact, since 9/11, the numbers of blacks enlisting at all has decreased quite a bit, though over the last year or two it has gone up some as the economy has tanked.

2005 numbers: http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/docs/demographics/FY05%20Army%20Profile.pdf and http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/WorkingPapers/WP32Adamshik.pdf and the GAO report http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05952.pdf



Some by year info at links here: http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/demographics.asp including the 2010 http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/docs/demographics/FY10_Army_Profile.pdf

So, "The Minorities do the dying" is as much a myth as "The Poor do the dying".
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22452.pdf gives break outs of deaths by race.

From a site that bills itself as 'liberal' (what ever that means)

U.S. Troop Casualties - 4,477 US troops; 98% male. 91% non-officers;
82% active duty, 11% National Guard;
74% Caucasian, 9% African-American, 11% Latino.
19% killed by non-hostile causes. 54% of US casualties were under 25 years old. 72% were from the US Army
from http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm

I remember hearing a story on NPR about US Army members getting out and saying they had a problem.
Uncle Sam said 'Nothing to see hear' and then the Soldiers were getting into fights(family and nonfamily),
turning into serious drinkers and commiting suicide. since they had started drinking, they laid it all off on it
instead of why they were drinking, PTSD.

i say do whatever it takes to help them to be whole and complete. they risked life and limb. they've earned it.

Private_Joker wrote:Everyone knows a conscript army is fairly useless in terms of moral and teamwork anyway.

You're absolutely correct. Everyone knows that the British lost WWI and the Allies lost WWII.


This post contains a factual error. See if you can spot it.

Albatross wrote:This post contains a factual error.

It's got to be this part. The post doesn't actually contain a factual error.

This post contains a factual error. See if you can spot it.

Albatross wrote:

Private_Joker wrote:Everyone knows a conscript army is fairly useless in terms of moral and teamwork anyway.

You're absolutely correct. Everyone knows that the British lost WWI and the Allies lost WWII.


This post contains a factual error. See if you can spot it.

And Isreal was conquered in 67

Laughed out loud and almost spilled my drink....

Using decade old data from THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION.

I retired after 22 years at the sharp end of the stick. I now work for a company that does a great deal of statistical work, most of it for the DOD and the Human Resources command of the US ARMY.

Adjust the "Middle Class" number for those decade old base calculation figures by $20k and what do you have?

Cherry picking numbers out of obsolete statistical databases and modifying the base to make some statement to support their agenda is what the Heritage Foundation is legend for.

Tell you what, there have to be some combat troops in these forums still on active duty. By combat troop I mean your job starts with an 11 or a 19 or you are in the teams. Lets hear from them on what the make up of the current combat troops are.

I know what it is because I live 4 miles from Fort Knox. I attended the graduation ceremonies and my church hosted the kids 2 weeks before graduation when the Armor School was still here and now that it has left and been replaced by an active duty combat brigade I am surrounded by neighbors who are the platoon sergeants, 1st sergeants, and commanders of those combat troops. The majority of the troops recruited are from poor families, they are married and trying to support families in these hard times and they are bone tired of 10 years of watching their friends die in a never ending war that NOBODY cares about unless one of their family members is in it.

The "Heritage Foundation" is rich white people and their kids do not die in these never ending wars but they sure make some pretty slides.....even if they are a pack of lies when compared to the ground truth.

Soldiers whine because none of you pampered children give a gak. Your President goes on vacation. Your congressmen chose their parties over their oath of office. And when a soldier's contract is over, they stop loss him like a slave in Roman times and tell him he has to stay in and fight or go to jail. Those same politicians tell him he has to sleep and shower next to a man who is sexually attracted to other men and to ignore his christian background. Never mind the fact that if that same homosexual (you can call him gay if it makes you feel better) is much more likely to infect everyone in his squad if he gets splatted by a roadside bomb because he had unprotected sex with his "husband" before he deployed.

We would love a draft that would let everyone have an equal chance to die in a road side bomb, sleep next to another male who is obviously of low moral character and has not butt fethed another male is 3 months or more, and die for a country of people who obviously do not give a damn if we live or die and then change the retirement plans we signed up for 10 or twenty years earlier so they can give more money to members of the Heritage Foundation.

If you have picked up that I was one of those combat troops that you asked about why they whine so much good for you, you are not stupid enough to get out of the draft that is coming in two years.

Of course if you have a pimple on your butt (Rush Limbaugh) you can avoid it, or if you are politically connected you can get 7 deferments in a row (Guess which Vice President that was), or if your daddy is big in politics and you are a big enough coward you can skip the 3 year waiting list for the Texas air guard and then choose to train in the only fighter aircraft guaranteed to never be deployed outside the United States and then not show up for any drills (and then get elected President) and the list could go on. What do all of these cowards have in common? They are all members of the Heritage Foundation... and the draft for the Viet Nam war was a joke because all of the rich people who wanted their kids safe got them out of it

The draft for World War two was the real thing. No deferments except for those who really qualified.

World War II lasted half as long as this war. Nobody went on vacations. People went to jail for war profiting. A president's son was in the 2nd wave on Omaha Beach. We nuked another country (twice) to end the war sooner. That's because there was a draft and there was a real incentive to win the war quickly.

I hope when they cut the DOD budget in half we get a real draft. I bet we get out of the sandbox then....and then you will know why the troops whine so much.

NeedleOfInquiry wrote:Those same politicians tell him he has to sleep and shower next to a man who is sexually attracted to other men and to ignore his christian background. Never mind the fact that if that same homosexual (you can call him gay if it makes you feel better) is much more likely to infect everyone in his squad if he gets splatted by a roadside bomb because he had unprotected sex with his "husband" before he deployed.

We would love a draft that would let everyone have an equal chance to die in a road side bomb, sleep next to another male who is obviously of low moral character and has not butt fethed another male is 3 months or more, and die for a country of people who obviously do not give a damn if we live or die and then change the retirement plans we signed up for 10 or twenty years earlier so they can give more money to members of the Heritage Foundation.

And it was going so well till that point.

LOL, touche


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In response to who do you send in a war when you use a draft.

In a real war you send ALL of them, you nuke the enemy populations just to get their leaders, you bomb their cities to dust, you make it so painful the war ends because anything is better than the war....

That's what a war is when a country is serious and not just exchanging the blood of it's troops for money for their rich.

Read the fine print, the data is not a decade old, unless data from the Defense dept from 2006 and 2007 counts as ten years old in some weird way.

And I was commissioned as an armor officer. Been in combat units. Have an 11b son. Other son an an ROTC scholaship to a military college. Wife still active duty though obviously not combat arms. And since where you live seems to make a difference to you and defines your ability to have an opinion, I live right outside Ft Stewart and close to Hunter.

Find more recent data that contradicts what I posted. Heck, find ANY data that contradicts what I posted.

For what it is worth, here is a left leaning source (a paper by a Berkeley economics guy) that also uses the Heritage data. http://elsa.berkeley.edu/econ/ugrad/theses/ryan_moffett_thesis.pdf Seems to be pretty widely accepted data.

So you"been" a armor Officer, I was always a combat troop in a combat unit, not just "assigned" in a few. We had cooks assigned.

I live next to combat troops, NCO's and officers who agree with me and bitch to me about the current conditions. Did you stay an Armor Officer and stay in combat units. make it to retirement?

The base data for that Heritage was from the 2000 census that Heritage used to "determine" medium income for the average family was it not?

As for the data... I will. By the way with you Fort Stewart location would you agree that Hispanics exceed the general population ratios in Combat arms or were you too far away to notice?

NeedleOfInquiry wrote: Never mind the fact that if that same homosexual (you can call him gay if it makes you feel better) is much more likely to infect everyone in his squad if he gets splatted by a roadside bomb because he had unprotected sex with his "husband" before he deployed.

i'm with MrDwhitey on this. you asume the Gay soldier was allowed to get married. and notice how their Ass is in the same sling that his squad is in?
Do you think they're going to all bust out of a closet and come runnin' for you? seriously?

i have to tell you before and after that little 'Gayrade' of your's, you're pretty spot on in my opinion. Just remember that there are thousands of Gays/Lesbians
who would love the ability to fight and die for this country. but due to Bassackward thinking of homophobes they can't even work as translators.

as you were....

"Since FY83, the percentages of Whites and Blacks in the Active-Duty Army have steadily decreased, while the percentage of Hispanics has increased (from 4% to 10%)."

www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/docs/.../HispanicsThenNow83-03.ppt slide 4

Open source, looking for more




Automatically Appended Next Post:
"According to the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future project, these patterns continued at least through the first two decades of the volunteer force among high school graduates. Enlistment was higher among blacks and Hispanics than among whites, among men from single-parent households, among those whose parents had lower levels of education, and among those who did not plan to attend college.47 "

http://futureofchildren.org/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=72&articleid=526§ionid=3615

mattyrm wrote: Alright, I was at work listening to the radio today and there was a 4 hour debate.

Do we give the armed forces enough help when they leave the service?

Here is a link to the news night page.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8781382.stm

Nobody is more pro armed forces than me, I did a half career in the RM. I did 6 tours and 10 years in a combat role. Not some pansy REMF unit like the engineers, signals, RLC, almost all of the Navy and the Airforce as a whole. I'm also stunned by the amount of sheer bs I hear when a serviceman is talking about his job "Yeah I was in the RLC but I was a sniper and I saw loads of dead babies and that" or "I joined the engineers but I'm a para-commando in the kung-fu regiment so I got PTSD"

Anyways..

1. thanks for your service mate 2. I think we should bend over backwards for the men and women that serve our countries (im american)....I have medical problems and was never able to serve... and i think that the people
that serve are the real superheroes in life.

NeedleOfInquiry wrote:So you"been" a armor Officer, I was always a combat troop in a combat unit, not just "assigned" in a few. We had cooks assigned.

I live next to combat troops, NCO's and officers who agree with me and bitch to me about the current conditions. Did you stay an Armor Officer and stay in combat units. make it to retirement?

The base data for that Heritage was from the 2000 census that Heritage used to "determine" medium income for the average family was it not?

As for the data... I will. By the way with you Fort Stewart location would you agree that Hispanics exceed the general population ratios in Combat arms or were you too far away to notice?

No, it was not. The zip code/economic data came from that, and they applied the 2006 and 2007 enlistment numbers to the areas.

Here are the 2010 stats for races. http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/docs/demographics/FY10_Army_Profile.pdf Look for yourself at what races are in combat arms. By the way, I have already posted that.