We need mandatory National Service in the US

Great Debates
121

Brick,

“Or rather, why do you feel the need to be the same?”
Because when the private marginal cost is below the social marginal cost, it gives economic actors an incentive to overutilize a resource.

“You certainly can given a flexible schedule.”
Working full time an dstudying full time. Why do you think it’s called full time? You will have them work 40 hour weeks and take 5 classes a semester? That’s what full time studying and working would mean. Have you ever known someone who worked 40 hours a week and took 5 classes per semester?
“But, acting as though denying individual choice always has a negative outcome is pretty naive.”
“You realize the “solution” to many collective action problems is government intervention, right?”

You argue as though I think the State should never intervene. I was careful to add caveats concerning non-excludable and non-rival goods. Did you skip those in your desire to paint me as someone who is opposed to all gov’t intervention?
Young people are less productive because they have few skills. Typically, late teens and early twenties is when they acquire those skills. They will not acquire them as fast if they also have a full time job at the same time. This will retard that skill acquisition and make their skill-related productive period shorter.

Those less productive 18-20 year olds can be employed in other occupations. If you force them to work for the State, they will not fulfill them those tasks. You will retort that they wouldn’t have been productive anyway, but they won’t be anymore productive when employed by the State. They will likely be less so, considering that they will be forced to be there and will have litle to no chance of losing their job.
In short, your scheme would make people’s skill-related careers shorter by 2 years and give economic actors an incentive to utilise a resource even when it could be better utilized elsewhere.

On another note, why not have the State permanently draft everyone like that? What problems woul there be? I am not looking for some vague “that wouldn’t work”, I am looking for precise reasons related to efficiency. The State could make EVERYTHING cheaper.

122

How the heck are they supposed to attend college when they’re living in a labor camp out in the desert?

If this is national service, then it’s going to take 100% of the recruit’s time. Ever see an army private attending college?

Or, are you imagining just a mandatory crappy sub-minumum wage job, and the recruit goes home at the end of their work day? Where are these kids supposed to live? With their parents?

Auuugh! This is so bizarre I don’t even know where to start.

OK. So this is your theory, as I understand it:

We draft kids into national service, and put them to work. This requires higher taxes, which people are happy to pay, because hey, it’s national service.

It also results in a labor pool, which can be used on public projects. This means the public projects will be cheaper. So we can build a bridge for $1 million instead of $2 million, because the labor pool cost won’t show up on the books. Therefore, we’ll get more bridges and railroads built, because the taxpayers will think they’re getting a bargain.

Except, as you admit, they’ll really be paying even more than they would have paid if they just paid taxes and hired workers at market rates. And this is just counting the monetary cost to the taxpayers, it doesn’t count the cost to the kids who are forced to work for free.

123

You didn’t answer my question, and you also said they should be equal, which doesn’t make any sense to me. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you. Regardless, what negative effects do you foresee occurring as a result of the government “over-utilizing” the resource (eg. enlistees)?

Yes, I have known a few that have done it. Usually, its a “part-time” job where their hours are over 40. This is because there often isn’t the flexibility in most “full time” jobs. That being said, a full college load is typically anything between 12 and 18 credits, which can be as low as 3 or 4 classes depending upon the type. With summer classes factored in, you can definitely be on the low end of that while still completely two “years” of college course work.

I can bullshit on that one. The enlistees would be in school, which is where kids today often receive their job skills. They would obtain those skills at a lower overall cost to them, while developing a work ethic and discipline that often comes with conscription or other service.

Other people will fulfill those tasks.

Most of these resources are currently being underutilized. So no, it currently isn’t being better utilized elsewhere unless you honestly think most young people are using there full talents at a pursuit they find fruitful. Second, you would not (generally) shorten people careers because most eventually productive people would be doing the same thing they would they otherwise would- going to school. They would actually be better off since many would incur far less debt acquiring those skills.

Because a centrally planned economy is not responsive or efficient as a general rule. The mitigating circumstances in this case being that it is a small group of people being affected with a larger collective upside. Just as it doesn’t always make sense to have every kid go to school until they are 15, the overall benefit is clearly there.

I don’t know many recruits, but I can’t see why they wouldn’t be able to do school online if given the opportunity.

People are never happy to pay taxes. The point is that given the choice between bridges falling down and paying slightly higher taxes, most people would prefer the latter. Especially if it results in a more educated populace, and a cheaper overall cost to completing those tasks.

They are paying more because they are getting more. How is this hard to understand? Yes, we can pay the same, and have our infrastructure crumble. Paying outside employees market rates will, by design, cost more than farming it out to enlistees.

124

You do realize they do not spend 100% of their time in service “in a labor camp out in the desert” don’t you?

I have a friend who got his bachelors while he was serving and I have another friend still in service and he is working on his Masters.

125

If I understand him correctly, it means that this labor pool won’t only be used for necessary jobs that the public can’t afford to fund. Instead, it will start competing with private businesses. Since the teenagers are being paid an artificially low wage by the government, private businesses can’t compete with them, and the wages in those businesses would collapse. Maybe I’m misunderstanding MichaelEmouse, but this is something I was concerned about earlier. It’s why I said your idea would throw people out of work and affect a lot of people’s wages.

126

Except you said just the opposite earlier. If there’s a choice between crumbling infrastructure and higher taxes, they’ll selfishly refuse to pay higher taxes. If they’d pay the goddam higher taxes in the first place, you wouldn’t need the labor battalions to make it seem cheaper.

If people won’t pay higher taxes to fix crumbling bridges, why would they pay higher taxes to draft kids for national service? Which is it?

127

Well, he specifically denied this was his concern (as far as I can tell). As to your concern, I am not sure why, if the program is limited places where there is minimal private competition , I don’t think this will be a huge problem. Perhaps XE contractors may see there wages go down, but I don’t think there would be too many negative effects wrt private wages as a whole.

128

No, I didn’t say the opposite. There is an excluded middle here. People may not pay X more in taxes, but they might pay Y more for the same thing. The problem is that currently, people won’t fund large infrastructure projects because the cost is too high. If the cost is lower, they would likely be more willing to pay it. Take this extreme example. Say you need to have you roof redone. You may not be willing to do it now if it will cost 10k, but you might if it costs $100. Obviously, the cost matters. If you can artificially lower that cost, then more people would be willing to fund it.

129

Yes, but would you pay 11K in consulting fees to a company that will find someone to fix your roof for $100? The numbers don’t add up. You’re saying you’re making it cheaper, but of course you’re actually making it more expensive. This is like people complaining about the cost of the war, and then someone else saying that we’ve got this giant military anyway so at least when we’re bombing people we’re getting some use out of it.

130

Back in the Depression, Canada set up work camps for single unemployed men, who were paid low wages by the government. The result was a march that was quashed by the government, following which there was a bloody riot when the government arrested the march’s leaders. The significantly contributed to making the government so unpopular that at the next federal election the Conservatives were tossed out and replaced by the Liberals. Forced labour doesn’t go over well here in Kanukistan.

131

Actually, this seems to be the gist of brick’s proposal. They spend all their time in service without the guarantee of acceptable nearby educational facilities.

Those guys in service also chose their path and the limits on the type and quality of education that might be available. It’s not like the kids in brick’s plan will be allowed to do their service in Cambridge, MA with the hope of attending MIT, even if they’re math geniuses with 150 IQs and perfect SAT scores. But if you allow exceptions for them, you slip down that slope pretty darned fast.

There was some stuff about internet courses, but I’ve yet to see an online school that could realistically substitute for a year of study at a good brick & mortar university.

132

Given the fact that the evidence before us establishes that Y > X, I fail to see why that should be.

133

Yep – the numbers don’t add up in German (as cited above) oder English – though advocates presumably do know how to “count down” to national bankruptcy resulting from boondoggles:

National Citizen Service ‘too expensive’

134

There is the problem everybody has been trying to explain to you. It is impossible to “artificially lower the cost” – you can disguise the cost (and increase it in the process), but you cannot actually “lower” it from what the laws of economics have decreed.

135

What would the impact on the debt ceiling. It would be an expensive program. We are gutting taxes now, so we could not afford a program like that.
I like the idea of sending a few million people through a non military boot camp ,so one time in their lives, they would be in shape.

136

Except that nobody has actually proved that this is the case. For example, assuming there were no minimum wage laws or immigration laws, could it theoretically be possible to transport construction workers from rural china, pay them a lower wage, and yet somehow have the total costs be less than that of an American work crew? Of course it would be. That’s one major reason why companies outsource. They can pay far lower wages. There is no reason anyone has detailed as to why this could not be the case with a mandatory service program. In a labor intensive field, in which the government is involved, the total costs (or production) can be greatly reduced (increased) with reduced labor costs.

The reason why the German program costs a lot of money is because the conscription is doing doesn’t do anything beyond what a military does. If those German soldiers were building roads, providing daycare, providing health care, etc., you would see that the cost-benefit analysis would look very different. Either way, the true costs of such a program are not just on the government liability side of the ledger. They can also have benefits like you see in Israel where mandatory conscription has created a mini Silicon Valley. It also comes in handy in the off chance that your country actually get attacked. Either way, saying that such a program must be a net loser is demonstrably false in the case of Israel, and it could be in the US.

137

You’ve got that backwards. It’s quite possible that the economic benefit would be greater if those same workers were on the free market. You are automatically assuming that a “good” result is the “best” or “optimal” result. Do you have proof of this?

As for your labor transfer example, you are basically arguing for a “maximum wage”, rather than a minimum wage. China can have cheap labor because it manipulates the currency exchange rate with the US. Even so, they’re having problems because real wages are rising. In fact, we’re starting to look at outsourcing to even cheaper countries since China isn’t as cheap as it used to be. We could do something similar and mandate the maximum pay somebody gets, but that strikes everybody as fundamentally un-American.

Basically, even in your single cheap wage example, those wages only stayed cheap while standard of living was low and currency manipulation occurred. In China, currency manipulation still occurs, but demand for labor is high, so real wages are rising, bringing up standard of living up with it.

We can’t do the currency manipulation trick within the US itself. So, you are essentially arguing we can artificially raise demand, artificially lower wages, which artificially lowers the standard of living for millions of people to benefit millions of others. You don’t a problem with this?

138

Beyond knowledgeable people stating that one is a direct result of the other? Beyond the fact that many of these startup CEOs met and trained with there eventual partners while enlisted? There is no evidence these people would have even met had it not been for the Israeli army. Obviously, I can’t “prove” that this is the best or optimal result, but you can’t ever prove something like that.

No I am not. Answer the question being posed. Can you transport workers from a low-wage country to a higher wage one, and have lower costs as a result of doing so? Again, this is part of the reason you have outsourcing. It’s also part of the reason we have terrible things like human and organ trafficking. Why do you think more prostitutes brought to other countries go from poor countries to rich ones? It’s because there is a lower opportunity cost and far fewer opportunities for someone in Moldova than there is for someone from Hong Kong. Why do you think buying organs is far cheaper and easier in a place like India than it is in Canada?

Which isn’t relevant at all. The wasn’t specifically about China, it’s about how using cheaper labor can result in lower costs. Again, this is really not complicated or controversial.

Again, this is completely irrelevant. I am not arguing for currency manipulation. As far as lowering the standard of living for some to benefit others, I have no problem with that. Do you have a problem going to Walmart, or basically any other company that pays low wages (lowering employee’s standard of living) to offer lower prices (benefiting customers)? I admit that this is broader, more direct example of that, but I don’t think many people would have a huge problem with taking a more utilitarian approach to something like this. Then again, I didn’t think people would be so against this idea either.

139

Walmart can’t force you to work for them. You can say no, and you’ll be no better and no worse off than when you started. That’s a vitally important difference.

140

Yeah, the main difference between us and Israel is that their threats are within their own borders. We have whole oceans separating us from any real threats. Unless a Muslim extremist group gets a hold of some long range bombers or ICBMs and plans on carpet bombing the East Coast,(and really, lot of those nut jobs can’t even sneeze without us knowing about it) there’s no need to conscript.It’s the same thing with homegrown terrorists, they can’t take a piss without the government knowing about it.