Fun Fact: This section of Project 2025 was written by Christopher Miller.
You might know him from such things as “On January 5, Miller issued orders which prohibited deploying D.C. Guard members with weapons, helmets, body armor or riot control agents without his personal approval.”
I’m not opposed to a mandatory community service year upon turning 18, where a person who is physically and mentally able is required to spend 12 months PAID to work in a government organized community service program. This can help new adults gain new skills, create contacts, get references, and get off on the right foot financially.
But “military” is definitely not the right direction. IMO
The problem is that just discriminates against lower and middle class people more than anything.
It is work experience that has no meaningful value for a career (especially if EVERYONE has it) that mostly just serves to delay when people start college/trade school/whatever. Which hurts their ability to "hit the ground running" because they need to relearn what little they retained from high school but also impacts lifelong learning rather significantly. Whereas anyone who can pay off a doctor to say they have flat feet or some other non "yucky" issue will skip it.
And also? It is more or less worthless for the military. For anything short of cannon fodder, a year is nowhere near enough time to train someone to be useful. Even room clearing (e.g. Rangers) needs significantly more training to be less likely to shoot friendlies than foes. A lot of the problems in the Ukraine war (on both sides, honestly) can be traced to this. A soldier who can do more than "hold the line" needs significant training.
And while I think a return to having a strong emphasis on civil engineering and infrastructure as public service would be a great idea... without an education that is basically just hard physical labor. So now we have even more kids starting with debilitating injuries before they even begin their "real" career.
Federal service is very broad though. Just consider ask the different Federal Agencies and the roles they fill.
For example, when I was in college I had a 6 month internship with the National Park Service doing trail maintenance for a national park. It serves me no purpose as a resume item but I look back on that time extremely fondly even though it was the hardest physical labor I've ever done. It was incredibly physical work with really 10+ miles of hiking every work day. The NPS across the US has an huge budgetary backlog of trail maintenance going back decades.
That all is just an example but I'm sure the NPS could make great use of thousands of young workers to improve our parks. Similarly, I'm sure across the board the Federal Agencies would have a vast multitude of roles for this Federal service, including working for the DoD but in non military roles. Most of the agencies would have vast amounts of work that isn't covered by their budgets so it just doesn't get done.
Federal service is very broad though. Just consider ask the different Federal Agencies and the roles they fill.
Exactly this. There are lots and lots and lots of jobs throughout the federal government (and states if we include them) that would be great to have people get exposed to. It would also give people a very real sense that government is not some airy-fairy thing that is just there to be bureaucratic and "steal" your taxes...
I hear your concerns.
I say force everyone to do a year of retail. That'll do wonders for compassion as a whole.
I have my doubts. In my experience, the absolute worst customers were the ones who wanted to lecture you because ~I used to work in retail.~ I think some people just suck.
They used to work in retail when it wasn’t insane.
That’s like “I used to drink directly from the stream”
That is the sad truth.
Assholes are gonna asshole. If someone actually needs to work retail/service industry to know how much it sucks, they don't have any empathy to begin with. This isn't like "Wow, being a model or a pro wrestler is awesome" where people learn the reality of needing to maintain your body in a specific form while constantly traveling and being underpaid and so forth. NOTHING glorifies retail/service industry work.
So you mostly just get "Oh, I worked at a supermarket 40 years ago and my favorite thing to do was to walk around the parking lot to find carts. So I am really doing them a favor leaving the cart in the middle of a parking spot in 120F weather".
Haha. I mean, you do have a point there.
I mostly agree. I think having a "do it by age 30" rule or something might be a little better than requiring it at 18 (I graduated high school at 17 and was already in university at 18 so this would have messed things up financially as well as mentally).
Cool, but we also take Finland's law about tuition: it's illegal to charge it.
No private schools. It's done wonders for their society because the rich people invest in the same schools as everyone else.
Endless War is a Hallmark of Fascism. This will require a large number of cannon fodder.
Ask one of the schmucks advocating for this to be the first to enlist and I bet they’ll have some bullshit excuse as to why they can’t
Rich kids and those with bone spurs will be exempt.
Require all private schools that wish to have accreditation take a minimum of $10 and a maximum of $11 of federal dollars.
My school had us all take it at 16.
If you refused you had to go sit in the cafeteria by yourself and weren't allowed to even study. Just sit there with your eyes open not doing anything for like 4 hours.
Fuck that’s awful. Were you in Idaho or something equally awful?
Pretty much, we're also talking about right after 9/11.
We had people signing delayed papers as soon as they turned 17 so they'd go to boot immediately after HS graduation.
It was a wild time.
They had us take it in the 90s in my high school but we quickly knew it was worth nothing so everyone tanked it on purpose. We were already weary of standardized testing and knew just what to ask the teachers.
Our school offered it, and you got out of your other classes to take it. I’m still in the military, some 18 years later, and I’d still suggest it for everyone as an option like mine was. I wouldn’t even feel too badly about schools requiring it. It’s just another test, without any obligation after. But, for a lot of lower income families, and for students who don’t perform too well, this opens another option for them after they graduate. Especially one that, with some potential risks to your body or life… could absolutely pay for your college.
My high school made everyone take the asvab. I must have scored well on it because the military was up my ass. I remember uniformed soldiers regularly ringing the bell and asking for me. I had zero interest in joining the armed services, but they kept coming. My mom started answering the door for me; yelling at them to get lost and leave us alone.
bro you're saying this as a fun anecdote but i'm not from america and this is terrifying
Some additional context:
This was 99-00. There was no war. Both of my grandparents served in ww2 and Korea to gain US citizenship. My dad came up in the Vietnam era when all his friends were getting drafted (aka forced to go to war). He tried to enlist but was blind in one eye, so they didn't take him. My brother would have enlisted if it weren't for a really bad skateboarding injury.
If I were good at football, it would have been university coaches knocking on my door. I was good at something the military was interested in, so they tried to recruit me to enlist.
I was 18 on 9/11/01. And my first thought was that Bush would take us to war, I'd get drafted and I needed to plan my escape to Canada. This was scarier than being recruited. I just wanted to play my bass guitar and smoke my marijuana in peace.
Reddit was right. You are being gang stalked by the government.
We could start the first war fought by dropping rich people from drones!
No wait... dropping rich people on fire from drones. That's better. We might run out of rich people, but they will run out of rich people first!
Tell me it’s a draft without telling me it’s a draft
For those not familiar with it, it is an aptitude test that covers a wide range of topics. The results can be informational. Beware if you score well enough to fill a job in the army that is really understaffed, you will never get the recruiters to stop calling.
I had all 3 branches showing up at my house and lying to my face to get me to join after my school made me take it.
You'd think they would realize that lying to someone who scored really high was a bad idea.
Time for someone in the know to start spreading some "How to fail the ASVAB miserably!" memes.
It isn't hard...also, they will take you anyway, you would just be a bangbang.
I have no idea what the test involves, but if that had been me, me and my friends would have tanked it and made the results useless.
You'd be surprised how many private schools receive federal funding.
But honestly this isn't the worst thing. As long as it's interacted with in an honest manner the ASVAB is an excellent career test. So an honest interaction with it would be counselors telling students their results and showing them career paths that line up with those results. To be clear, we're talking about civilian career paths.
The problem is I don't hear about it being done that way anymore. (My highschool did exactly the above) I only hear about it being used by recruiters, for recruiting.
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