If they both live in base housing, then their paychecks are still the same. I never saw a dime of BAH because I always accepted base housing.
What about two employees of a private company, one of whom gets health insurance for a single person as a benefit, and the other who gets health insurance for his entire family as a benefit, despite being equals?
Have you worked in the private sector? The employee has a higher contribution when he or she elects family coverage.
That is, the employee with dependents (and family coverage) has a smaller paycheck, not a larger one. The tradeoff is greater insurance coverage. And, if the employee doesn’t want a smaller paycheck, he or she can elect individual-only coverage. No such election is possible for the servicemember without dependents who wants to increase his paycheck amount.
Not to claim ‘great’ status for my thread, but perhaps this is crusing towards GD material?
Wow!
I know the OP was talking about military but the OP sure brings up memories. Just substitute ‘teachers’ for military.
Go ahead. It will save money. I’m sure the quality of the miltary personell won’t decline just like teacher quality wasn’t affected by the same thing. Our best and brightest still flock to teaching as their career…I’m sure the military will still maintain their quality as well.
Fundamental fairness? You want to throw that out there? Then to be fair, everybody in the US should put on a uniform, undergo training and hie their miserable asses to Afghanistan or wherever the hell else we decide to invade and put their money where their “fair” asses are. The military is entitled to every fucking cent spent on personnel and dependents for the simple reason that they are expected *to die a little if called upon.
*
My cowardly tuchis calls that a bargain.
Yes, your paycheck goes up if you get married and live off-base. Single people can also collect the allowance if they live off-base. When they deploy, it goes away, unlike for married personnel. Your example doesn’t really work. An unmarried E-5 is unlikely to have the same sorts of rent costs as a married E-5. But that aside, BAH is also a way to help prevent military people from getting into financial trouble because of rent. Pay is low, and the military would prefer not to have creditors come knocking at the door because PO2 Snuffy can’t pay the rent. It’s both a matter of expediency and a way to compensate people who are often required to be in harm’s way, and who are separated from their families for extended periods. It’s not like anybody is making any money off this scheme, and if you and your family are in base housing, you forfeit that extra allowance.
The OP’s intent is well-meaning, I think. But penalizing the youngest, and therefore lowest paid members of the service, is not the way to go. Retention in the military would suffer dramatically if people were told: sure, go get married and have kids, but you’re on your own if you do. Your new baby has leukemia? Tough shit. Wife gets hit by a car? Tough shit, suck it up. The benefits are usually what keep people in: access to medical care, bonuses, housing, steady check, care for dependents.
The other day I flew to New York. There was a Delta flight and a Spirit flight. The Spirit flight was $200 cheaper. Delta was sniffing all like, enjoy the narrow seats and no snacks.
But guess what, no airline has super comfortable seats and airline snacks are pretty bogus anyhow. And Spirit got me to LaGuardia just like Delta would have. And I love these two hundred dollars I saved!
(boldings mine)
You claim it isn’t your place to tell them how to live their lives but you clearly want to tell them how to live their lives. Can any other employer tell their employees to not get married? Or say, no benefits for dependents if you do?
The fact is, these “cuts” offer no real savings, will cause a drop in enlistment, you won’t be able to cut the entertainment facilities on bases because of the “grandfathered in” dependents. Of course you fail to point out that the base pay that an enlisted person gets is not competitive with the “real world” jobs. The benefits are what make the compensation competitive.
One savings you haven’t pointed out is that we won’t have send out death notices or death benefits to spouses. Maybe we should only take orphans and eliminate those altogether. Heck we wouldn’t even have to bury those people.
Well, those benefits will keep them in after their 6 years. Most don’t re-enlist, anyway.
Further, do you want someone to stick around because fuck, they need the benefits even though they don’t necessarily love the mission or the prospect of deploying? Or do you want a soldier who has made a choice to forego the comfort of starting a family early in order to pursue a calling they believe in?
Not telling them how to live their lives…if they choose those are the conditions. They are free not to choose to enlist. Plenty of other employers say no to benefits for dependents, by virute of offering no benefits. Besides, the military isn’t another employer. It’s a unique vocation with a unique mission.
Military pay for a first-term enlistee without benefits is quite competitive. Couple grand of spending money with all expenses paid? Yes, please.
Cowardly because you knew this argument wouldn’t hold water if you had included the immediately following sentences that made it plain that the unfairness is visited on actual servicemembers (which you instead omitted from your quote)? That some servicemembers get less because of this policy?
Take it head on, silenus, instead of hiding behind strawmen.
Idle thought…if the OP’s plan went into effect, it might suddenly become a “gayer” military. Since the federal government doesn’t recognize gay marriages anyways, dependents wouldn’t be a problem for most potential gay soldiers. Recruiters might purposely seek them out. It could hasten the cultural transition put into effect by the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
Yeah, that was a “My bad.” But I’m so incensed at the very idea of the OP that I’ll grab every little thing to rail on. :o
If you want to cut manpower costs in the military, isn’t the simplest and most straightforward way just to shrink the force? Forget about all of those dependents we’re paying for-- What about the soldiers themselves that we’re paying?
And for those soldiers we do retain, it makes a lot of sense to give them lots of benefits. There’s some amount of total compensation that the market will set for serving soldiers. Most of the benefits the military gets are things that, due to economies of scale, the government is able to provide at below market cost. Take away those benefits, and you’ll have to raise compensation in other, more expensive, ways, in order to keep attracting the same caliber of personnel.
Topics like this make me seethe, and really, I should just pass them by.
My grandfather was retired Army, my father retired Air Force, my husband retired Army.
Lower grade enlisted members are not bathing in money. And while a working spouse is almost necessary, it’s next to impossible to find a job at every duty station, no matter how skilled you are.
And the BIGGEST unaccounted for pay factor you have is the fact that military members are on duty 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. 365 days a year.
The boss calls you up at 2 AM on a civilian job and says, “Get yer ass in here. We’re going out into the field for a month.”
As a civilian, you tell said boss to screw himself, and roll over, go back to sleep.
My soldier jumps up, gets dressed, throws together what he needs. I pack the goodie bag. I probably have to take the kids out of bed, get them dressed, and shove them into the back of the car. A lot of military families can only afford ONE car.
And then for the next 30/60/90 whatever days, I’m Mom, Dad, repair person, bill payer, etc etc etc.
It’s REALLY great when you work 40 miles away from home, and the baby has a chronic ear infection and needs the tubes.
By this time, Hubster had been in about 17 years, so he’d “qualify” for a family.
And just a little FYI: recreation and shopping facilities on base/on post are supported by the Morale, Recreation, and Welfare fund, a sort of little “tax” that is placed on all purchases.
My biggest gripe is that the folks who come up with all these “great moneysaving ideas” have never walked in the boots of a military member OR a spouse.
I’ll listen to your suggestions AFTER you put in your time.
~VOW
I did my time…my 4 years, anyway. So unless you want to move the bar to ‘Until you’ve done 17 years’, here’s my reply:
Lower grade enlisted members ARE bathing in money…those who don’t have dependents are, anyway. They have, almost literally, no financial responsibilities other than the ones they choose. Extrapolating their pay out to an hourly wage for 24-hours a day is absurd. Not germane to the topic, anyway.
Depending opon what the civilian job is, a boss may very well call up at 2 a.m. Again, it doesn’t mean anything in the context of this discussion.
For that matter, since you’ve been ‘in’ for 17 years, it has no bearing on you at all.
It sounds like you have a row to hoe. As do a very many people with civilian jobs who have difficult things to deal with.
Actually, Hubster retired in 1988.
After the budget-cutters quit pissing on the dependents, they go after the retirees. The BRAC KILLED retirees. CHAMPUS sucked big time, until TriCare replaced it, and TriCare had to go through MANY revisions to become palatable.
The SINGLE BEST BENEFIT for retirees is the TriCare prescription drug coverage available through ExpressScripts. Now that Hubster’s anti-seizure medications and Parkinson’s medications are generic, we can get a three-month supply of those for ZERO cost.
We’ll probably get screwed out of that eventually, though.
~VOW
I don’t understand posts like this. If your husband’s job was so terrible for you and your family, why didn’t he- upon the end of his enlistment- go get a civilian job? Your family chose to be a part of that institution knowing full well what the demands were. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for your husband’s service, but let’s not act like your family had no choice but to be at the mercy of the government.
It was his JOB. He was going for retirement. You ask a bunch of long-timers why they put up with the crap in the military, and they’ll tell you flat out: retirement.
And that’s not huge piles of money, either. You get 50% of your base pay, not including housing or BAS allowances, and you pay taxes and Social Security on that money. If you choose TriCare Prime health coverage, you also have premiums which are deducted from that pay.
A BIG factor to military members going for retirement used to be the uniformed facilities at nearby installations. BRAC took that off the table. Even if you DO live near a base or post, you often are told that the uniformed medical facility cannot accommodate dependents of retirees, you must use CHAMPUS. And I’ve found military doctors woefully uninformed about coverage and submittal of claims. One doctor even told me, “You just take your receipt from the civilian doctor downstairs to the CHAMPUS office, and they pay you back on the spot.”
I’m surprised I didn’t need CPR for choking.
I’ve heard military pharmacy clerks telling obvious Social-Security aged customers that they needed to use “CHAMPUS” for their medications.
HAH. CHAMPUS ceases as soon as you are covered by Social Security. It’s only been fairly recently that TriCare For Life was created as a supplement to Social Security coverage. It’s literally been a godsend.
Anyway, back to your remark, Belissima: we put up with the crap because of the promise of retirement. And Uncle Sam reneged on much of what was promised to military retirees, all in the name of saving money. Those Congresspeople who came up with the cost-saving measures, though, made damned sure they kept all THEIR bennies!
But that’s worthy of another post.
~VOW
Oh me, oh my. How utterly unlike everybody else in America!
How about using automatous robots instead of people, no dependents that way.