The Pentagon says we are paying our troops too much

[robby]

I wrote the following in this thread a couple of months back:

@robby

…I also think that money could be saved by taking a hard look at military salaries. While I think that anybody getting shot at should be well compensated with increased combat pay, there are a lot of people in our military serving their time and getting paid far more than is warranted. Between bonuses, untaxed allowances, and superb benefits, military personnel are very well-compensated–too well compensated, IMHO. I left the service eight years ago, and took a drastic pay cut, even taking a job as an engineer. Correcting for inflation, I didn’t actually catch up to my military salary until this year. Looking at current military pay rates, I see that they have increased at a faster rate than that of inflation since I got out.

@robby

While I was a nuclear submarine officer, I was teaching at a military school for my last few years of active-duty service, so I wasn’t receiving any sea pay or the like, nor was I receiving the nuclear retention bonus because I was planning on getting out of the service. If I had been serving on a submarine instead of teaching (and receiving all of those additional incentives and bonuses) I would have been making about $20K more than the $70K I was grossing in 2002.

I was actually not counting any pay other than what any other active-duty O-3 (Army Captain or Navy Lieutenant) was getting who lived in my area. This included my base pay, housing allowance (which took into account the cost of housing in my area of the country), and Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS). The latter two made up about one-third of my gross pay, and were not counted as taxable income. Note that the housing allowance is increased if you have any dependents, such as a spouse.

In 2010, an O-3 (whether Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine) with 8 years of service grosses about $65K in base pay, and $25K in untaxed housing allowance and BAS (in this part of the country), for a total of $90K not counting any other incentive pay, sea pay, sub pay, etc. As I stated pay has increased by a larger amount than inflation. Military base pay was increased by 3.4% this year over last year, for instance.

I think that $90K a year is a lot of money to be paying to Navy Lieutenants/Army Captains stationed on shore/stateside.

Navy Lieutenants with 8 years of service and serving on a submarine are making well over $100K a year.

I also think that the retirement benefits are very generous. In few other jobs can you retire with a full pension with only 20 years service. Military retirement also includes lifetime free medical care for yourself and your dependents.

On the other hand, I’ll also note that going through my initial training (nuclear power school, nuclear power prototype, etc.) and serving on a submarine was the hardest, most stressful job I’ve ever had in my life. And this stress was nothing compared to the stress on those serving in a combat zone.