Really? Then in my 4 years in the Marine Corps I learned nothing about military life?
Fact is, everything you need is provided to you. Food. Shelter. Clothing. Transportation to anywhere you are required to go.
As far as converting your military salary to dollars per hour worked in order to prove a point…I’ve heard that before, and it struck me as a silly argument then.
A point that must be made, and I haven’t waded through the entire thread yet so apologies if reiterating things expressed earlier…
There are different reasons for people becoming soldiers.
I’m a Brit, our experiences are different.
People are drafted, people enlist because they can’t get a job, people enlist because its expected of them.
In the U.K. there was until recently a three year waiting list, if you were LUCKY, to join a unit that would be front line fighting in Iraq or Afghan.
With defence cuts thats no doubt longer.
Reservists are, to put it mildly, very enthusiastic to volunteer for active service.
Its a cultural thing over here, if joining up and being part of a garrison in Germany against the day the Big Bear comes over the Hill is it, then recruiting dies the death.
But the chance to do the other stuff is very,very attractive to the average young Brit male.
Or the not so young, or female Brit.
So the posters up thread who categorise soldiers as somehow being a different section of society from everyone else are not correct in their belief.
And in the U.K. we have conscientious objectors as the same as every other country, we don’t slag them off and we don’t punish them.
A very significant majority are in the 18-22 region.
Base pay + special duty pay + BAS/BAH + sea pay + combat pay + tax free + reenlistment bonuses + uniform allowance + separation pay + free training + free college education while in + free college education when you get out(which now can be converted to free college education for one of your kids).
Expenses.. None. Free health care, free dental, free room and board.
You don’t even have to worry about being qualified for a job. They take you with zero experience, train you for many months or years, and pay you while you are training.
You don’t always get all that pay. Not in the Army. Sea pay? Pshhh. Special Duty pay? Pshh. Uniform allowance? Not adequate to cover uniforms. Even deployed I only made a bit over $36k. My wife makes more than that as a school teacher.
No time to do school while in. Not in a combat unit. I was out of training about six weeks when I deployed the first time. Over there 13 months, home 14, of which 3 were spent in the field training for next deployment, gone another 12 months. I’m not sure what cushy ass job you had, but life in an infantry brigade isn’t easy. Certainly isn’t on par with “pay and benefits”. Gotta do it because you want it.
Good. We made progress. Your job sucked. Fair enough. That doesn’t mean everyones did.
So why does everyone get lumped into the same category?
Actually considering that pleny of soldiers/Marines enlist in the infantry, it seems that the work is about exactly on par with the pay.
How much of your pay would you sacrifice before the job wasn’t worth it? 10k? 15k? See, at some point, the pay is NOT worth the job…but at the amount you agreed to accept for your services it is.
It really has nothing to do with ‘wanting it’, any more than any other job. Maybe it sucks to work in a greasy kitchen. I could just as well say that the $9/hr. isn’t good compensation, but I really ‘want it’.
Uh… no. It’s not. Remebrt that you get paid the same no matter What job you take. Being the guy getting shot at and getting blown up most often is a job only taken by those who actually want that job.
Its more like getting $9/hr for cook or cashier or busboy or bartender. You pick the one you want, not the one that benefits you most.
The difference is, a school teacher has to pay for various things such as food, rent, electric, etc. You don’t.
How much is an average school teacher’s salary worth after paying for these things, and how does that compare to a soldier’s?
They offer a job that pays a certain amount.
You are willing to do that job for that amount.
Whatever other factors figure in to motivate you to do that job don’t enter in to this argument. The job pays what it is worth, just like any other job.
More. I happen to know because my last year on active duty immediately preceded my wife’s first year teaching.
No, they offer ALL jobs for the same pay. The “other factors” are the ONLY ones that can possibly influence your decision.
I’m curious why, if everyone joins up because they want to serve, yadayadayada, they have the whole prohibition against leaving. One would think that if everyone there was there because they were driven by duty to be there, you’d want to get those that weren’t driven to be there to leave.
A sense of duty/patriotism gets some people to join, sure. Because, in their ignorance, they don’t realize what they’re getting into.
It’s like other jobs in the sense that it’s not always what you expect it to be, like anything, sometimes you have a certain image in your head and reality is not quite the same. Also, I don’t think everyone joins out of a sense of patriotism - but that is the main reason I joined.
I know people that have left out of frustration with training, or because they “washed out” of the training they wanted (pilot, for example). Some left because their spouse got a great job in the area and they put down roots and some joined because they did not want to be away from home so much.
It’s not a job that fits everyone. Not everyone makes it through recruiting and training and not everyone that makes it through stays.
I agree - we shouldn’t slag off or punish objectors - they have their reasons and they are just as valid as mine for serving. There is a decent sized community, not far from my city, where there is a large Mennonite community. In that community, those that joined the Forces were the minority, by a great margin (I believe they had less than ten in the Second World War).
I loved that they recently moved the War Cenotaph, so it actually shares a green space with the Conscientious Objectors Memorial.
Yes, you shouldn’t do that - I did at the time when I was hurting and a little whiny on Basic (cut me some slack, I was a pretty naive 17 year old) and I made a mental note not to do that again. Looking back, it was funny.
Eh, we all did that at one point or another. I remember one very crappy period towards the end of our stint in drydock where 14 hour days 7 days a week were not abnormal, and we figured out that we were making like 3 or 5 an hour.
It’s a contract. There are consequences to breaking any contract.
I know you qualified your statement with “most often”, but I just want to point out that there are many people from awful neighborhoods, and even active gang members in the military where at home the possibility of getting shot at is a fact of life. I would imagine for a lot of them it wouldn’t factor into their choosing the job as much as people from a safer environment.
It’s not against the rules to be an active gang member in the military at the moment.
Not entirely true.
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/justicelawlegislation/a/gangs.htm
Not that there are no gangs or gang members in the military, but it is technically against military policy to recruit them. I know you said it isn’t against policy to BE a gang member, but considering the legal definition of a gang includes involvement in criminal activity, I would argue this point.