Business Owners being Drafted by Selective Service

Factual Questions
1

I have a friend who has a firm belief that the military draft is coming back in the next few years due to a WW2 scale war and all men 18-55 are going to be drafted for military service. Much of this is not worth arguing over because you can’t really win arguments with most conspiracy theorist types.

I run an online startup and I began to wonder whether business owners would be included in a theoretical draft. I have searched online but can’t find much information on this or even on if business owners were drafted during previous wars. The closest I can get is on the selective service website http://www.sss.gov/classif.htm where the Hardship Deferment classification exists. Presumably if you run a company or small business, being drafted is going to cause financial hardship.

Furthermore, I would find it hard to believe that the government would want to draft a whole wave of young entrepreneurs who do contribute quite a bit to the economy (particularly in technology). This would be even more significant in small business situations where removing the leader would be a fatal blow to the whole company.

I had a teacher who would tell us about the Vietnam era and how his classification put him very far down the list. However, it seemed that back then they classified you based on your religious and economic status far more than today.

Anyway, I figured someone here must have some experience with this and would be able to answer.

2

If it’s a WW2 scale war, then the economy and technology won’t be things separate from the war.

3

If you read more, it seems they are looking for people between 18-1/2 through 26. This makes sense as people older than 26 begin to look at long-term commitments like marriage and families. Also, it is based on a lottery of which you are eligible for one year. Each successive year until you are 26 you are dropped into a lower category reducing you chance of being called in.

That all being said, the reason why I got out of the Navy in 2010 was because my rate (i.e. job) was at 135% manning. It was pretty much the same across all jobs in the Navy. It took about two years before the manning dropped appreciably and people were able to advance again.

In addition, we also have multiple levels of reserve status. From “ready” reserve where there is an expectation that you will be deployed, to, in the reserves but probably not going anywhere. You can also be called back in, regardless of your reserve status, as you had prior military service, it’s just part of the deal.

So, in to actually draft people in, there would be a series of events before we got there: 1) All active duty would be forward deployed, 2) all ready reserves activated and then forward deployed, 3) all inactive reserves activated and forward deployed, 4) all prior military members called back in and activated and forward deployed, 5) then we start the draft.

The reality is that the military used to be draft based. “Draft” did not have a bad name to it until the Vietnam War, until then, that’s how we operated it. We’d pull people in, train them, send them out. When the war was over, we let them go and the military downsized accordingly. Now, we have an active military, on standby, that can go into just about any battle. The reason for this is that it was proven to be ineffective to have a draft base military. The primary reason being that people were reluctant to do so and performed poorly and just found way to work the system to get out.

There would have to be some insane war where people were dropping like flies in order to call a draft.

4

There were a LOT of inequities in the early years of the Vietnam era draft. In the latter years they came up with the lottery (which was televised and probably got good Nielson ratings from men 17-18 years old) and did away with the college deferments.

5

The way we fight today does not lend itself to a need for massive numbers of troops. We would have to turn almost our entire economy over to wartime production in order to supply a full draft of all men 18 to 55. Most businesses their owners and key employees would be given wavers to support the war effort. Even the support economy would be deemed vital. I could see key business owners drafted and given Commissions as a short cut to Nationalizing essential supply and technologies.

6

Whatever the imagined reason for it, any new draft would require an act of congress to enact. So, whatever the rules might be about who would get drafted would be decided then.

7

Don’t remember it being on TV. There were about 7 or 8 of my High School friends sitting in my backyard listening to the radio back on February 2, 1972. We were all either 18 or soon going to be that year. The whole thing was kinda surreal. I don’t think that any of us really realized how serious the situation was. There were lots of Americans being killed and maimed in Vietnam at that time. We knew each other pretty well, but I don’t think anyone knew anyone’s birthday except there own, of course.

The guy came on the radio and explained how he would be reading 365 dates which represented birthdays. The lower dates, say the ones he read from from 1 to 50 meant you were almost certainly going to be drafted.

And so he started reading. “Number one, March… (I swear he let all the March birthday boys just hang there for what seemed to be 5 or 6 seconds) 6”. BAM!!! It was one of the guys in my yard’s birthday. His face turned white and said he had to go. He ended up joining the Navy before his notice arrived. The rest of us managed to stay above the number 50. I was 239. None of us ended up getting drafted. (And the guy continued to read all the numbers very slowly, leaving a good 5 seconds between the month and the date.)

8

In the days of the draft, especially during the Vietnam War when a LOT of college-aged kids were drafted, but before the draft lottery was started, military service fell heavily to poor, undereducated, and underprivileged kids, and that largely meant blacks.

Kids with more advantageous backgrounds tended to get into college, and could get deferments because of that. Better-off kids could get into the Army Reserve or National Guard. (Can you say George W. Bush, for example?)

This left the poorer demographic. They got disproportionately drafted.

Or, alternatively, they enlisted in desperation, in the hope of escaping poverty. The military promised skills training that could help them be employable after they got out. For blacks in particular, this largely failed: They tended not to be chosen for special skills training, but instead got assigned to infantry, to be sent to Vietnam to die.

These problems became very controversial and were much discussed and debated at the time. This was one of the reasons they started the lottery system.

A few cites I was just now able to google up with some discussion:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/africanamer.htm
http://www.amistadresource.org/civil_rights_era/black_opposition_to_vietnam.html

Google blacks drafted during Vietnam war to find more.

9

If it was a lottery then he may have been waiting on whatever random date generator they were using.

10

There were 2 drums like they use for bingo numbers. Wire mesh sort of things set up horizontally and there was a crank to turn them on their axis. Inside the drums were 365 opaque plastic capsules, like the kind you get from a 25¢ gumball machine that gives out little toys. In one of the drums, each capsule contained a slip of paper with a number from 1 to 365 written on it. In the other drum, each capsule contained a date, from Jan 1 to Dec 31.

So, they’d start out buy spinning the number drum, unlock and open the flap, and pull out a capsule. They’d open that and announce what number. Then they’d close and lock the flap on that drum and repeat the process on the other drum, getting a date. There was a sort of tote board where they’d put the date next to the number.

The word going around was if your number was < 101 don’t make any plans, if it was > 200 you’re good, and if it was between 100 and 200, you might want to consider some sort of plan b.

11

I have two brothers and remember watching the lottery on TV. Both had higher numbers, and were considered safe. If they were to do a draft again I imagine women would be included, too. My number would have been 348, so I would have been in good shape.

I’m not sure why a business owner would get a free pass over anyone else, however, but I imagine the situation would be addressed somehow. Weren’t young men who were the sole support of their family exempted in some way? I know when my grandfather had a heart attack in the 1940s my father, the second son, was allowed to come home for a while and help with the small farm they had. His brother didn’t, but I think my dad was stationed here and my uncle overseas.

12

I don’t see how our current service economy would be given wavers - how many mcjob and call center guys do we need? We simply do not have the same level of industrial production in the country any longer. We would have to draft the schmoes and send them to trade school to man the damned factories that have been closed - all the idiots have been sending their kids to school for white collar office positions. There are not that many people trained for anything like inside/outside mechanic, pipefitter, boilermaker and so on any longer. We import it all from China or somewhere.

13

Apparently, you have never been to a shipyard. There are many tradesmen in the Norfolk area, and I imagine in the San Diego area as well. I’d also throw in the shipyards were we actually build our ships, from the ground up, using US labor. In fact, it is almost 100% US labor due to the restrictions imposed not only by security but by also numerous Federal regulations.

These guys make everything. And, the supportive industries around also make everything. BTW, boilers are on the way out, I don’t think that they have made new ones in years. The ship I was on, commissioned in 2001, had boilers from the 40’s. They are now turbine powered, like with a 737. They had turbines already but were steam turbines.

14

That would have been the draft for men born in 1953. Apparently none of those numbers was ever used.

http://www.sss.gov/lotter4.htm

15

In WW II, there were many people deferred for various reasons, including hardship. I don’t know about business owners generally, but the idea of young people starting a major business was pretty much unknown. I suppose a young person could start a grocery store, for example, but if were drafted, his wife could run it.

My father got a deferment because he made the diamond tipped dental drills that had previously been imported from Germany. He and a couple coworkers were the only people in the US making them and it was considered important enough to defer him. Then he turned 38 and was no longer eligible.

I came of age post-Korea and pre-Vietnam. (I turned 18 in 1955.) I got deferred through college, then grad school, then from teaching math until I was 26. At that point, I was still eligible in principle until, IIRC, 35, but the army didn’t want people over 26, so there was no real danger of my being drafted.

16

Note that this (conspiracy theory? nightmare scenario?) would be an unprecedented draft. Even in World War II, the draft ended at 45 and it never included “all men.”

17

Given I spent 20 years as the spouse of a career naval submarine a-ganger, I am more than familiar with shipyards. You know how few actual naval shipyards there are and how few workers that soaks up? I do for both subs and targets.

18

I think the religious classification thing was primarily whether or not you were either:

  1. A conscientious objector (In the US, the big ones are Church of the Brethren, Mennonites, Amish, Quakers, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, though at least by Nam you technically didn’t have to formally belong to one of them.)
  2. An ordained minister (I think you had to be a full-time career preacher - just being ordained by a religious group like the LDS or JWs that technically “ordains” a large percentage of their followers didn’t count.)

If you claimed one of those statuses and were able to prove it to the satisfaction of the draft board, you could get reclassified. It wasn’t like there were recruiters in the back offices pouring over questionnaires and trying to make sure that the new batch of draftees was at least 2% Greek Orthodox and not more than 20% Mormon because there had been complaints in the past of disproportionate treatment involving those groups.

19

I’d think that any sort of skilled tradesmen or people with manufacturing experience would have a pretty-much-automatic deferral. There simply aren’t enough of these people left in our modern economy to allow the ones we have to be thrown into a meat grinder in some oversees hellhole.

As other have alluded to, it’s the people with low-level McJobs who would be screwed.

Another factor is, in this day & age, it would be difficult to justify a male-only draft. I’d say it would be more likely than not that women would be elligible for the draft.

20

it is the industry that became exempt.

during WW2 when food and agricultural workers were in short supply then anyone in that industry might be deferred. also if you were in defense industry you might be deferred. Not only Mr. Stevenson would be deferred but also Chester Riley.