Why DO we?

“Why do they always send the poor?”

Song lyrics from System of a Down’s ‘B.Y.O.B’ …. And a sentiment that I’ve seen in various forms in documentaries and blogs for a while as well as at ‘peace rallies’ and war protests … a certain segment of the population would like to have you believe that there is a conspiracy in this country to send the poor … oh, sorry … the ‘less fortunate’ (see my December 2004 entry ‘It’s the holiday season’ if you want my opinion of that particular term) … off to fight and die.

The fact of the matter is … it is based on a false premise to start with … the United States boasts the largest all volunteer military in the world. The key word there being ‘volunteer’ … there is no draft … no one is forced into the service … they are there because they chose to be there.

Now … can it be said that a majority of the troops come from the ranks of the ‘less fortunate’? Yes, but lets think about why that is…..

First … let’s look at the motivation. The young adult from a family that is scraping by with two parents working minimum wage jobs … To many of these the military represents their best hope of earning a good wage, learning a trade, and coming out with a student loan option that is one of, if not THE, best available to anyone. This is the type of person that has a very large motivation to join the military; it’s likely their only shot at college (unless their grades are exceptional or their sports ability in the top percentage) and even without that the skills learned in the service will likely give them a good advantage in the job market … or they can go career military which also has it’s benefits. Starting pay is likely better than what their parents are making and the benefits are really good.

Now … let’s look at a middle income household. College is more likely option without the military help, though the GI bill is still a consideration. Pay scale is likely less attractive, however, and benefits, while still good, are more likely to be considered ‘average’. There is still some motivation for joining the military, but unless they are from a military family that ‘pull’ is likely to be less than the pull of college and ‘professional’ life.

Now … someone from upper middle or upper income family … college (assuming they have the grades for admission) is almost definitely a ‘given’ without the military assistance, starting pay is unattractive; and benefits are likely to be considered ‘sub-par’ in their experience. There is likely to be very little motivation to join the military; the incentive just isn’t there.

Now … this isn’t scientific by any means … just observational data … but it would make sense to me that the lower the income of the family situation to start with the higher the incentive to join the armed forces … meaning, that a volunteer military is almost certainly to be made primarily of those coming from lower income households with middle income households having the next best showing and upper income households to be virtually absent.

Adding more incentive to the middle and upper income brackets is going to add even more incentive to the low/no income households and therefore likely maintain the relationship between the three brackets.

The only way that you are, realistically, going to get a military that is an even representation is to instate mandatory service; at which point it has ceased to be a volunteer military and become enforced servitude.

Now … let’s look at this from a different angle … let’s assume, for a moment that there is some conspiracy out there to send our ‘poor’ off to war ….

I’m going to be called a cold heartless monster for this, but what’s the problem? Should we take our ‘producers’ and put them on the field of battle? The poor represent the greatest drain on social resources while providing the least benefit to said society. Yes, some of them are hard working and just can’t manage to get ahead, some are truly victims of circumstances beyond their control. Certainly some of the young individuals from these poor households will rise up and become the producers of tomorrow … most of these, however, will distinguish themselves in other ways; either in school or early in their military career (should they volunteer).

Now … I don’t advocate rounding all the poor up and shipping them off to Iraq … that’s not my point. My point is simply that, the military is generally made up primarily of lower and lower middle income families because they are the most likely to see service as a substantial benefit. We are not ‘luring them into service’ we are offering an incentive to serve … anyone has the opportunity to do so and many do. I do not believe that there is now, or ever has been, a president that would wantonly put those that serve in our military into harms way … regardless of the backgrounds of those servicemen. And I would like to think that ‘we the people’ would have enough sense to not put someone into power that would, but maybe I’m too optimistic about the aptitude of the voting public…..

The people questioning the ‘exploitation’ of the poor by the military need to take a step back from their political agenda, stop thinking with their hearts, and use the grey matter between their ears for a change. Do they want a no exemption draft, or maybe 4 years of mandatory service for every high school graduate? No … they don’t want that nor would it be a good idea to fill our military with people that don’t want to be there … it is, however, technically what they are arguing for every time they point out the fact that the military is largely filled with young adults from lower income households….

Okay … I think I’m done rambling on this issue … it’s odd what a song on a radio station will start….

Tax Day

Well it's tax day ... hopefully everyone has their taxes done and filed already. If not, well you'd better hurry it has to be postmarked today. I am assuming that, as usual, the post office will be accepting filings until around mid-night and postmarking them with today's date.

So ... how much did you pay this year?

What is sad is the number of people that will answer that question as 'nothing, I got money back'. Yes, yes, that's nice ... I got a refund too ... but how much did you pay?

People are frikkin clueless. It's like no one pays any attention to it anymore wake up and smell the coffee people, you're being fleeced. You are falling into exactly what the government wants ... they rely on the fact that once you get used to your Net Income that you'll forget about the Gross Income that you actually EARN.

They aren't giving you a refund ... it's not a rebate ... it's your flippin CHANGE. You had a bill (a tax bill but a bill) you over paid they're giving you the remainder of your money ... it's change it may be $10,000 but it's still your change from the bill.

Now ... let me ask you ... if you go to a store and buy a new portable radio (I guess these day's it would be an iPod) that costs $250 and you give the clerk $300 and they give you $50 and someone asks you how much you paid for the radio do you reply 'nothing! I got money back!'? If you do ... you're a moron and need to stop reading now ... you're beyond help.

The problem, of course, is that taxes aren't collected like that .... frankly if they were to do away with withholdings you would have a riot in this country as people realized exactly how much of their money the federal government was confiscating every year.

You see ... even most people that do their own taxes don't pay much attention to that 'Tax Due' amount that is looked up on the tax tables once you jump through all the hoops to figure out what your taxible income is ... all they look at is the total at the bottom of the page telling them if they owe or if they are getting a 'refund' (change). If they're getting a refund they don't care how much was taken ... those that owe may actually shake their heads and bemoan the fact that they have to shell out some of their actual earnings to pay the government ... but still they generally only pay attention to that final number ... not the total tax due.

Yes, I got a refund, no I can't tell you off the top of my head what I paid (nor would I post it here if I could) but I can tell you that it was right around 20% of my earnings for the year (which by definition means that they withheld more than 20% of my income for the year since I got change) ... 1/5th of my income to the government ... and that was after substantial deductions to my income.

What's my incentive to do better and earn more? The only result is that it's going to move me up into a higher tax bracket, meaning that harder work earns me the right to give a larger % of my income to the government..... In fact it's possible for a small increase in income to actually cause you to owe MORE than the actual increase in your income if you were to go from the top of one bracket to the bottom of the next ....

As many of you know ... I support tax reform in the form of the Fair Tax bill (more info at Americans for Fair Taxation). Recently they have been heading up a campaign to send faxes from 100,000 fair tax supporters to thier congressmen by Tax Day ... I am pleased that as of last Wednesday they had sent faxes from 105,000 fair tax supporters to their respective Senators and Represenatives. I am hopeful at least that some represenitives will see that there is serious support for this issue and that as a result that maybe it will get the attention that it deserves.

On top of that the Fair Tax bill in both the House of Represenitives and in the Senate has the greatest support that it has had to date ... including represenitives from both major political parties. The more people that hear about this, the more support that it has gained in the population and the harder it has become for the politicians to ignore.

That said, however, I don't see the bill passing this year ... or likely next year either. This is not an issue that I believe this congress is going to let go through because I feel that there are those elements within both the House and Senate that will bury any meaningful reform in either the tax or social security systems of this country in order to prevent the credit for those reforms being attributed to G.W. Bush or likely any republican president.

In watching the political atmosphere in DC I don't think that much that isn't involved in laying out a timeline for our surrender ... er ... sorry ... I mean withdraw from Iraq (a move that would be a virtual death warrent for the new Iraqi government), further increasing the income tax burden on the 'wealthy' (despite the fact that a majority of people in this country fall into the current definition of 'wealthy' ... and many of them are the first ones to shake their fist and yell 'yeah, tax the rich!' and then wonder why their tax bill went up.), or is otherwise directly harmful to the president or someone in his cabinet is going to see the light of day on the congressional floor until after the 2008 election.

Oddly enough, however, if they continue in this vein I think it runs a good chance of costing them in the 2008 elections because I think the people are paying more attention to these issues than some of the politicians realize.....

Wow and bleargh!

I really can't believe that this is my first post to the Path in 2007 .... Heck ... since mid-December 2006 .... man have I been lax.

A lot has happened since last I walked the path ... most of it a blur. I swear that every year the days drag slower, but the months go faster.... Time really is an interesting filter of perception.

There are many many reasons for my silence ... not the least of which is that I'm as lazy as ever and I swear that in the last couple of months what little time management that I had managed to hold over from NaNo has not only evaporated but took with it some of the time management that I had BEFORE NaNo 2006.

Work is as it always is ... somehow managing to have absolutely nothing on the schedule, but still managing to have more work to be done than can be finished today .... so it always looks like you can catch up tomorrow and maybe cash in some comp-time only to have that snatched away by a boatload of unsceduled work that manages to overflow into tomorrow.....

I've been pushed into the 3pm-11pm shift for the week so I can be here to help with any issues in our new DI suite as it has its maiden voyage so to speak. I'm hoping that means that I can maybe get some other writing done. ............

.....

I had written about 6 or 7 more paragraphs dealing with the Fair Tax, democrats, republicans and a bunch of other stuff ... but it seems that I wasn't paying attention and the editor here decided that I hadn't actually written any of that stuff .... or put any formating into the page at all and so it is gone forever into the void of the internet ... never to be seen. Maybe it was just a glitch .... or maybe blogger has brought a censor on board .... let the conspiracy theories begin....