It never ceases to amaze me that whenever issues of military pay come up, you hear the usual claims that paying more is just another form of conscription, an “economic draft.” That especially insipid idea has raised its daft head again at antiwar.com. By the logic employed there, any form of inducement is a “draft.” I can get you to mow my lawn by threatening to imprison you if you don’t mow the lawn or by offering you $30 if you do. The former would be a “conventional draft” and the latter would be an “economic draft.” And if you were to agree to mow my lawn in exchange for me washing your car, why, we’d both be “drafting” each other, just like when the Selective Service System used to have people thrown into prison for refusing their nation’s “call to service.”
You’re certainly right that that it’s not an economic draft by virtue of the fact that incentives are offered. It is an economic draft because it sucks money out of the private economy, which is a quite forceful means of incentivizing people to join the military. Less radically, you could say that the same thing is effected by the government switching funding from peaceful subsidy programs to funding the army.
Mr. Kerner’s response sucks all the meaning out of the term “the draft.” Antiwar.com’s remarkably obtuse posting claims that people who join the military are somehow subject to a draft; it does not offer Mr. Kerner’s more subtle reformulation as “resources are drafted to pay for people to join the military freely.” By Mr. Kerner’s gloss, any expenditure of resources to increase pay for government employees (sheriff’s deputies, judges, whatever) would be “an economic draft.” That particularly unhelpful gloss is not even implied in the antiwar.com posting, which is a repetition of the same frankly daft socialist reasoning we heard in all the debates over moving to an All Volunteer Force. Paying people more money to induce them to join the military is not in any important way like drafting them.
In this case, I don’t even understand Antiwars position. What is the (best) alternative? Are they saying they prefer the draft, that soldiers should volunteer without pay, or that we shouldn’t have an army at all? (If it’s an ‘economic draft’ to raise incentives, it’s an ‘economic draft’ to have incentives at all)
I didn’t really mean to defend the Antiwar.com post, although I suppose I might aim to ameliorate your view of their motivation for posting it, since I believe it’s getting at something meaningful, even if it’s incorrectly stated. And I didn’t mean that it is draft of goods, I meant that it is a draft of people by means of impoverishing them. Yet, I must concede that “economic draft” is a quite imprecise and therefore not very good term for this phenomenon.
Theoretically, if you’re a peasant farmer, and then I take away your land and crops, but I offer you a job in my army, how different is that from a draft? There is a difference, hence the imprecision, but under the circumstances, it might not be much. The effect of taxation on poor people in the U.S. is not as drastic as the above, but here we are talking about a difference of degree only.
It’s an “economic draft” because those people who “volunteer” for the military do so mainly because all private-sector opportunities are closed to them. Since unemployment leads to jail or death, it’s as if the draft was in effect.
Possible solutions to the economic draft include ending the current immoral, aggressive, non-defensive, wholly petroleum-motivated (publicly-stated pretexts notwithstanding) economy-crushing conquests of Iraq and Afghanistan, or eliminating the social inequality that ensures that so many poor people exist who are faced with the choice: Enlist, or starve.
Tom,
You sound like a Neo-Con plant in the Libertarian movement. I find Cato has suggested some big gov’t ideas too.
How can you say you spent your life fighting “coercian” when you insist on democracy at gun point?
Democracy is the worst form of gov’t…even Marx said that
democracy was the “road to socialism.”
According to this link for a Congressional hearing, military service is not aiding those drafted with post-service employment-http://www.workforceatm.org/articles/template.cfm?results_art_filename=vets06hearing.htm
Their findings are that young veterans have a 15% unemployment rate vs 8% for non-veterans. Not only are the poor more likely to join the military due to limited prospects, they aren’t even benefiting from the experience. Ouch!