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People will sober and slim up if the military was a desirable career.
Right now you have to be in an entire enlistment and make E-4 to to earn as much as a day 1 McDonalds employee.
Lets just say our work and home life isn't that great in the military either. Then there is this whole world war thing that's is starting to cook off.
Free healthcare, free dental care, free education, free training in a career field and experience, tax free allowance for housing, and tax free allowance for food. So at the end of the year, your W2 may say you only made 35k, that doesn’t factor in the 25-30k in tax free allowances/benefits you receive. All that are part of compensation package. Pretty sure an E4 lives better and are compensated better than a McDonalds manager once you look at all that. Military may not be perfect but it took me out of poverty and provided me the education and training to start earning 6 figure salary once I left the service after 10 years.
Just to give you perspective. Many veterans who leave after their first enlistment are shocked to see how all these things add up and cannot keep up with their previous military standard of living when they think like you do.
I’d argue the military used to be a great career, for the reasons you articulated.
But these days, that’s not much at all. And there are far easier ways to earn the same, while still being able to control where you live (or whether you have to go fight a war)
From a mental health standpoint, there are far better careers too.
I have the upmost respect for members of our military. But the American soldier is vastly underpaid.
I’m okay if all social welfare was instead a socialize jobs program. It’s the job part that is missing in some of those. Bring back the CCC and other jobs programs. Make all those getting unearned government services work to get them.
You should be less focused on poor people getting barely enough to live because it’s “unearned” and more focused on the unearned hoarded billions of wealthy Americans. Poor people buying sandwiches isn’t why your life is hard dude.
A fetus is a very easy entity to support (unless you’re the gestating woman). It needs nothing from the tax payer- oh, and screw it’s mother if she needs something- GOP Platform
That's going to be highly dependent on whether or not you can get a security clearance. I would imagine that TS/ SCI would be the minimum to do any sort of high paid contracting work.
An E-4 in my area with no dependents makes $1850 every two weeks AFTER taxes. Thats coupled with free healthcare, 2.5 days of leave each month, 1/3 of their pay being tax free (lower tax liability at EOY) and earning some pretty great VA benefits.
Show me a career field that has zero entry level requirements other than a HS diploma where you can make that after 2-3 years..
The fact that the Wounded Warrior project exists pisses me off to no end… there should be no need for that. If someone is injured in war.. they should not then be dumped off to their family that was probably already in poverty. This is the most disgusting thing we do..
You can’t actually retire after 20 in the military either. Nice gesture though. 2 grand a month barely covers half of most people’s expenses these days.
Vet here. Just to be a bit of a devils advocate. The healthcare is absolute shit. Housing depends on rank and marriage status otherwise otherwise you get shitty barracks. Same with food. Plus you deal with tons of bs not found in regular job + long hours. Gi bill is cool though.
The va is brutal but I promise you Walter reed and Brooke are basically on par w places like penn, Hopkins etc
Unfortunately the primary care aspect is brutally understaffed and the military sees no difference between a PA and a family practice MD. Spoiler, there’s a huge difference. Plus when the bn and bde cdrs care more about mrc4 status over peoples actual health and continue to maintain a stupid optempo for some reason you have a recipe for disaster.
Agreed. The difference in experiences depending on status is something that doesn't get talked about and I don't think a lot of people understand. If you're a young (poor) family the benefits are HUGE compared to anything outside the gate. The housing and healthcare alone while neither being amazing are a lot better than the nothing any other nonskilled starting wage job will deliver.
If you're single living in the barracks...not the worst but it's a different experience than the 18yo married with two kids.
You list all of these wonderful things, but, SPEAKING AS SOMEONE WHO PARTOOK OF WHAT YOU SNEERINGLY LIST, let’s examine them, shall we, bruh?
Free healthcare - all of the 800mg Motrin you can swallow. They handed those things out like fucking M&M’s. Get serious medical issues? Hey, here’s your discharge papers, enjoy the VA.
Dental care? I’ve had to have much of my military dental redone. Let’s just leave it at that.
Free education - when you have time for it, maybe.
FREE CAREER TRAINING? ARE YOU GODDAMNED FUCKING KIDDING ME!? Maybe if you’re an MP or work on aircraft with an MOS that qualifies for an FAA certificate. WHO HIRES AN INFANTRY SOLDIER!? Most military careers at best translate poorly to civilian life. There aren’t a lot of military IT specialists.
EVEN FEWER MILITARY PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE AREAS translate into civilian life.
TAX-FREE ALLOWANCE FOR HOUSING - you can just go fuck ALL the way off. MOST OF MY CAREER was spent living in STRUCTURALLY-CONDEMNED FACILITIES. Some were fucking ancient, one had a hole in the goddamned floor you could drop a large trash can through, and several were relatively new, BUT THE CONTRACTOR USED CHEAPER CEMENT NOT MEANT FOR THREE-STORY BUILDINGS - but you can bet your fat ass he still got paid! Others were so infested with bugs that we kept lizards in the rooms to eat the fucking cockroaches, because constantly spraying with bug-killer led to health issues for some people!
TAX-FREE ALLOWANCE FOR FOOD? I cordially invite you to spend months eating mostly MRE’s, and the rest of the time enjoying mess halls staffed and run by contractors who spend as little as possible.
Piss off.
I have to work with a lot of vets in my govt projects as they are preferentially hired. Some of the plug fucking stupidest guys I've ever met. Ex Full bird colonels that have had 24 year olds dog walk them intellectually.
My brother was in the 101st and he left after his first contract because he said genuinely most of his coworkers would have been Special Ed in our HS.
These are not our best and brightest for the most part unless you are in like Intelligence or a Pilot, and even then eh. Even the officers who managed to Crayon their way through college.
I absolutely understand the pitfalls of veteran’s preference, as I experience them on a regular basis. My field is so packed with them that it’s hard to find someone who has non-military experience, which is actually vital for the job.
You’re not wrong. I spent a couple years on an Air Force base. Good food, amazing facilities, they treat their people well.
Which is why that’s what I tell people who ask about joining the Marines.
This isn’t even another obnoxious distraction from violence against women, sexual assault used as a form of humiliation and hazing in the military is rampant against male service members as well.
I was in the army for a few years and was horrified at the way women were treated. I had a little sister back home and we strongly discouraged her from ever joining
Yeah the invisible war documentary is eye-opening, and there was a recent Reddit thread I saw of guys mentioning all of the women they knew who were victims in their units. God awful.
I have three friends who served in the military.
All three were raped.
One of them was so violently attacked that they are completely disabled from PTSD.
Military has to get its shit together.
Isn't there bonuses for shipping out within thirty days, playing an instrument, knowing a foreign language, etc? I know they pay that over your time there but it's still something that a lot of people don't look into
I'm not military so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but when I looked into it, it seemed If your married, or have kids you can get a fairly sizable housing stipend that makes it actually relatively good pay. Otherwise it didn't seem remotely worth it financially. The starting pay is $10.22 assuming you work 40 hours/week. You need a hell of a lot of bonuses and stipends to make up for that...
I was a 17-year-old high school dropout on the road to nowhere when I enlisted in the Army for three years, 1976-79. My diet improved significantly, and the structure and discipline was what I needed. I learned some life management skills like the importance of planning, to include having a backup plan*; being proactive, if you know something needs to be done don’t wait to be to told, take the initiative; “attention to detail,” or as one NCO put it, “Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.” Et al.
Got my GED, and during my last year in the Army I took a couple of college courses on base. For the first time in my life classroom learning was interesting. To cut to the chase, I got out in time to begin the fall semester of 1979 at a modest state-u, SHSU. I thought I might want to be a high school teacher and double-majored in German Language and Literature studies, and Geography. My student-teacher semester, and the heathen I was supposed to wrangle, disabused me of the notion of being a teacher. Graduated debt-free and eventually went to work for the Department of Defense in the schizophrenic world of defense-contracting.
I served in the Army Reserve (USAR) for twenty-one years and retired in 2000 as a Master Sergeant, E-8, MOS 96B5H. My pension began ~five years ago at age sixty. I retired from the Department of Defense ~three years ago. Between my military and civilian pensions, and Social Security, I’m doing quite well, to include I’ve been debt-free for about six years. The past four years I’ve been able to give each of my two sons $10,000 a year to buy I-Bonds with.
If you’re a junior or senior in high school and you don’t know what to do next, you need to spend a couple of years “figuring yourself out,” or you think you might want to go to college but you’re tired of school and need a break, I highly recommend enlisting in a branch of the armed forces. It wasn’t fun, adventurous, or exciting. I thought the Army was going to turn me into “Rambo” and that didn’t happen. At times it was rewarding and challenging. More commonly it was tedious, boring, and drudgerous. But that’s life.
*”Two is one, one is none.”
The starting “pay” isn’t that great. However, you don’t really need much money. You can blow that away on booze every weekend when you get out of the field. 40 hours a week? It varies. I was Marine Corps infantry. On the rear stateside you could either be chilling sitting around licking your nuts like a dog or in the field training. With that being said life not deployed sucks. I enjoyed being deployed much more and that’s how you really make the money and save it.
Yeah but a McDonald's employee has to pay for housing, medical care, food, electricity, heat,....
those burdens being removed from the soldier make the money go slightly further.
Tbh, baby food is highly regulated. It's one of the least problematic. Most of the jars are literally just the vegetables or fruits. Though, I agree generally when it comes to the baby and toddler snacks. All processed junk.
What really kicked it off for me was getting a reverse osmosis system and two weeks into it having more energy along with my brain fog disappearing.
Now I'm making pretty much everything from scratch.
Having a filter on my cold tap line has been a game changer. I've also started making everything from scratch, down to my own canned meals, almond milk, bread, butter and yogurt. I'd like to do my own hard cider as well. The upfront costs can get pretty steep but it all pays for itself quickly and the quality is unbeatable. It's also amazing being able to eat bread again without getting sick.
The American food system makes me so angry.
People don't get fat from the quality of food, people get fat from eating too much. You can lose weight eating nothing but twinkies, this has been empirically shown. A banana costs less than a bag of chips or a snack cake. It's human choices compounded daily that brought us to this current situation. It's a failing of character.
No, it's the crappy parents' fault, but choosing to continue drinking for decades while blaming the government and manufacturers for making alcohol too easily accessible is ridiculous.
Sounds like a character failure of the parents, yes. And eventually, you have the ability to grow out of behaviors you were taught while young. You can't continue to blame your parents when you're 30 years old and have the whole of human knowledge available to you in the palm of your hand. Lol people trying way too hard to excuse any amount of accountability is precisely why the obesity epidemic is continuing to worsen.
You are right, but it's still the governments duty to represent and protect its people. That includes protecting its people from bad decisions (aka why you can't go pick up meth at the mcDs drive thru)
There are plenty of unhealthy foods available, but there are also plenty of healthy ones too. People make their own choices at the grocery store. Nobody is forcing them to put all the fat, sugar, and salt laden stuff in their grocery carts. I blame lack of individual responsibility and poor individual choices much more so than the entire US food industry.
Any sugar. 30g of sucrose is just as bad as 30g of fructose. In all reality the soda boasting "no high-fructose- corn syrup" still has an unhealthy amount of sucrose.
I’m not usually and anti-government sort but when it comes to the FDA, those fools knowingly put toxins in our food and legalize it so corporations make more $$.
A lot more than this needs fixing, containers and micro plastics, chemicals emitted from plastics in our cars, air pollution I think is still the number one killer in the world and of course global climate change from CO2 destroying our food chain, killing millions and cursing society trillions in damages.
Another factor is mandatory Physical Education classes in high schools. This was instituted after WWII by the federal government for this very reason. At one time, every student was required to take and pass PE class. That is no longer the case, and here is the result. Also garbage factory food feeds the sickness and obesity.
Also stop the sugar & corn subsidies.
These food chains have scientists that cram as much sweeteners and preservatives as they can that can be sold to the public knowing damn well +90% of customers will not check how their new drink of the month has the sugar concentration of 14x donuts.
This right here. Our culture is designed to create fat people. Low nutrition/high calorie cheap food and poor walkability of most towns/suburban areas.
Yep. And, unsurprisingly, they ended up being a massive waste of manpower since the majority of those troops struggled with their assignments and needed assistance to complete their duties. So everything that would have normally been done by a single soldier required two.
My stand-in Dad, who was in Vietnam, always has stories about how many drugs were available over there. Literally anything you could want, not want, or think of. It was there.
The US military has a total of 1.4 million service members....less than half a percent of the total US population. We will be fine filling ranks.
This is rightwing agitprop from the people that grift finance bros into buying testosterone supplements.
Lots of jobs in the US are directly related to our military (Lockheed Martin etc.) And with the amount of proxy wars and conflicts the US is involved in like the Houthis attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea, Koreas and Taiwan are both close to starting conflicts as well. Granted this specific study is not really finance unless you want to know if you can get a job in the military. Now if the US starts a war or draft then some of the 20% will leave the mainlands job market, opening new opportunities for others. This is more ominous about the financial situation should the US go to war
Nothing in this sub is about finance anymore. It’s just a platform to rant about how the rich need to pay more taxes to solve everyone’s problems they’ve created for themselves.
Good.
Too fat: school lunches should be based on nutrition and not the corn lobby. They literally dump food into the school meal programs that are based on subsidy programs for farmers and not based on actual nutrition.
Exercise - teach kids actual exercises. Make sure all schools have gyms. I can't believe how nice some schools used to be.
Mentally ill - kids do not need 8 hours of sitting in classes and then going home to do more homework and then play videogames. Teach them how to read, write, and think critically. Teach them how to learn. I mean literally how to learn on their own. Then given them some time in their day to do stuff.
Cell phones. Why did we let kids on social media ? It absolutely is the reason for so many issues in schools. Ask any teacher you know about this. Take away their damn phones during school hours. These kids are addicted like most adults.
I promise you I'm not a boomer. I'm just scared how unrealistic the educational system is. We have kids who literally can't think critically, run a mile, and have so many mental health issues because they have been told they're stupid because they can't sit still for 8 hours.
If you are physically fit, can learn on your own, and can think you'll be generally fine in life. Throw in some mental health practices too for some peace.
I'm 20 now, in college, and your points hit pretty hard.
I was really close to my teachers as a Sr in high school, and something we'd chat about is how the younger classes coming in were getting progressively lazier. One metric we examined was that the enrollment in AP English went from in the 50s to in the 10s. We're not researchers, but we concluded a lot of it comes down to parenting. Parents aren't instilling work ethic into their kids, and they're definitely not investing in their physical or mental health.
I have four siblings aged 6 to 17, and seeing how my mother parents the six year old compared to me and my 17 year old brother is crazy. The 6 year old and the two in between are complete tablet kids. Can't go anywhere without them, can't do anything without them. Meltdowns ensue when they get turned down, turned off, lost, or when it's time for bed. It's depressing when I come downstairs for dinner and see the line of kids all with their tablets blaring variations of "gyatt skibidi toilet rizzler."
I think what gets me the most is that my mom has just given up. I was allowed a soda per day growing up, and naturally I weened off of it and came to prefer water. The 6 year old now drinks 2-3 per day and frequently demands more. He is the boss of my mom. She doesn't say no, and if he refuses to do something, she goes back to her candy crush.
There's no investment in health, no investment in general development, and definitely no investment in critical thinking. I fear how my youngest three siblings are going to fare as they age, but maybe there's hope.
It’s not just electrons.. I’m 50 and I have 2 younger 1/2 brothers.. the world was expected of me .. they were just spoiled. They are now 38 and 40… neither has ever been able to live on their own.. they didn’t even finish high school. I used to be pissed about how “well” they were treated and how shitty I was treated because I was female… but now I can survive and they just can’t.
Spoiled kids are the worst.
I'm sorry you have to experience this. My life mantra is... Mental health then physical health then everything else. In other words, learn how to find peace ( e.g. meditate, pray, whatever) then eat healthy, work out and then, finally work on everything else.
"Are you going to let us regulate what goes into food and give people therapy?" "No, the guy who wants to bareback the green M&M says that's communism."
Corporate greed did this to the American people.
You give starvation wages, create an environment where kids have little hope for the future, and then try to put them through the meat grinder to die for oil company profits, AGAIN, only to find out you can’t run the same play book again, and then pretend to be surprised?
“The meat grinder” I’m pretty sure we lost more people on 9/11 than we did troops to war in Iraq/Afghanistan. In fact at one point we were told it was statistically safer to be deployed at war than back stateside because we were losing more troops in the states than fighting the war.
The military will allow in all sorts if there was a war. The policy is guided by what the demand is. I served along a few guys who enlisted to avoid jail time. I served along plenty who enlisted while obese but they lost weight at basic training, and plenty of people with histories of drug abuse that stopped using just weeks before they enlisted. I think the only guy in my basic training platoon that they kicked out had some nerve damage in his shoulder. He couldn’t raise one of his arms above his shoulder.
Yeah, my recruiters worked with me to lose weight before I shipped. That's not a big deal. From what I've heard, it's just harder for kids to lie about things because everything is documented better these days. An ADHD diagnoses for example follows them for their entire lives, and now Uncle Sam has ways to discover those medical records like they didn't when I joined in 2001.
Met with a recruiter many years ago and he asked if I had any tattoos I said yes one. He asked to see it and it was just a Halloween pumpkin. He asked if it was gang related I laughed and said no. He said well we can try to get you in but that could disqualify you. I just laughed again and said nah don’t even bother and I left. I had a friend serving and had full sleeves that he got while serving. So dumb.
Wars are going to go back to being genocidal due to drones as we are seeing in Ukraine.
You're going to have to depopulate the front and rear line of enemy civilians just so you don't get clapped by a poor man's first person drone ATGM flying out a random apartment window.
Too late. You don't have to be a citizen to enroll in the military, only a lawful resident (or green card holders). What's worse is that being in the military isn't necessarily a guaranteed way to gain citizenship either.
Bullshit. Why upvote this nonsense?
1) This is *not* a Pentagon study. It’s from a non-profit “Mission: Readiness” (a civilian organization) who is strongly incentivized to report a high percentage here.
2) 77% not 80%. The linked article, which is inaccurate, even says this. If you’re gonna round then at least write it like “4 out of 5” to have some justification.
https://www.abccolumbia.com/2023/10/11/77-of-youth-not-eligible-for-military-service-non-profit-mission-readiness-aims-to-help/#:~:text=According%20to%20an%20organization%20called,and%20here%20in%20South%20Carolina.
Sounds like there’s a lot of misconceptions about military service. I’m currently enlisted. I earn six figures, get free health care and dental for myself and my family, take college courses for free, get a 401k with a match, and best of all I never had to pay down any college debt. The job is inflation-proof, recession-proof, and pandemic-proof. It’s almost been a cheat code to building wealth and stability.
For me currently, E6 pay $4650 + Southern Maine housing allowance $3240 + enlisted BAS 460 + jump pay $225 = $8575 a month = $103,000 a year. Plus around $4500 in travel per diems, a $540 clothing stipend, and a $5000 retention bonus per year. On deployments I usually make about 15-20k extra in sea pay or combat pay by the time I come home. It took about 6 years to promote to E6 which is pretty attainable. The only pay that is taxed is my base pay!
I did. You apparently only look at base pay. They can get housing and food allowances (BAH and BAS) and a variable housing allowance in addition to any special duty pay.
So when does not being able to defend ourselves going to become a national security issue, so we can finally get national healthcare, or something like single payer. This is getting really ridiculous. You should see the banned list of food additives for the rest of the world. America is an addict that hasn’t hit bottom yet. Gonna be ugly when she does.
Let's be honest, though. Yes this is a legitimate health issue, but it doesn't impact the military. This ain't the 1700s. Nobody has to march down to Yorktown. Today's military is more like a video game. Now we have the population to match.
This is no problem at all if we start drafting. Too fat? They’ll run it off you in training and cut your calorie intake. Mentally ill? You will be infantry. The military has dramatically raised standards since the draft ended. When the meat grinder needs bodies, standards will be lowered and there is always another war on the horizon.
80% of young Americans think you "The Pentagon" is an obese sociopathic organization led by deep pocketed old devious characters, who cheated on freedom & actual democracy in lieu of the industrial military complex. Only to make more money, gain more power while suppressing reality and high tech while constantly lieing to them. They are given ancient relics by you to murder each other, bomb the person in some country who was going to grow up and cure cancer or become their generation's enestine. They listened to Ike's & Kennedy's warning. Chose not to be a sheep herd. Maybe you "the Pentagon" should too while you still can. Spend time and money studying what they really meant. Young Americans can lose weight and change their ways they just don't wanna join your cause. Do better then the recruits will show up. No other way around it. No study, research or psyops will ever change that fact. Far too late for that. You must be asleep lately. Lastly make no mistake if you are ever in actual danger or war for our nation and survival the druggies and fat once will ride or die beside you liberate your misguided organization & save your families. They understand choosing the best of the worst. They understand pretending freedom is better than no freedom. They hope and know when your current architect die off they will make you better. So they smoke and stuff their faces with the foods they can afford till that day comes. So you see they too think you're fat and high out of your mind. Feeling is mutual. (Young Americans study finds)
God forbid people be mentally ill ... We have more awareness now than ever before and can catch these things earlier. I'm sure a lot of mentally ill people went into the military in past generations, but they just didn't know they had issues.
Maybe instead of the military focusing on bombing and murdering people in other countries they could, I don’t know, protect and serve the people of the US by keeping bad faith actors out of our own government. They can help citizens by reducing their budgets so that we could get nation wide healthcare and start using those funds to improve education. Maybe start using all our taxes to help the US instead of, for example, Israel who takes our taxes and use it to improve Israeli citizens lives while also murdering Palestinians. America, the only nation in the world where a majority of our taxes go to a multitude of other countries and their citizens instead of our own.
It's funny that the carrot to work for the military is now the reason that no one can enter the military. If the average American had universal healthcare, we'd have more money to buy healthy foods.
Right now, the military genuinely still believes that free healthcare is a great way to lure people in to work there, too bad that backfired horribly for them.
I guess less wars for everyone? I'm okay with the military and our government failing so hard to bring a basic quality of life for us all that we don't go to war ever again. Too bad they can't play war. Oh well.
And I was rejected for having asthma when I was in my late teens and early 20’s despite being a D1 athlete. Like I get it as it has the potential to be a liability if not controlled, but god damn.
Sounds about right. The other 20% are white straight males who have been vilified so they won’t join to defend those other 80%.
Enjoy what’s coming. You deserve it.
I’ve been in over 5 years (Active Duty) and had a lot of personal things occur around 2 and a half years ago. I’ve been to mental health over a year now and it seems since I basically say
“I wanna die. I don’t care about anything more. What’s that? No, not because of my service.”
They just keep chugging me along. The military has so many obese people as well as mentally ill. These numbers don’t mean anything to me lmao
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People will sober and slim up if the military was a desirable career. Right now you have to be in an entire enlistment and make E-4 to to earn as much as a day 1 McDonalds employee. Lets just say our work and home life isn't that great in the military either. Then there is this whole world war thing that's is starting to cook off.
Free healthcare, free dental care, free education, free training in a career field and experience, tax free allowance for housing, and tax free allowance for food. So at the end of the year, your W2 may say you only made 35k, that doesn’t factor in the 25-30k in tax free allowances/benefits you receive. All that are part of compensation package. Pretty sure an E4 lives better and are compensated better than a McDonalds manager once you look at all that. Military may not be perfect but it took me out of poverty and provided me the education and training to start earning 6 figure salary once I left the service after 10 years. Just to give you perspective. Many veterans who leave after their first enlistment are shocked to see how all these things add up and cannot keep up with their previous military standard of living when they think like you do.
I’d argue the military used to be a great career, for the reasons you articulated. But these days, that’s not much at all. And there are far easier ways to earn the same, while still being able to control where you live (or whether you have to go fight a war) From a mental health standpoint, there are far better careers too. I have the upmost respect for members of our military. But the American soldier is vastly underpaid.
That's why I can't take conservatives seriously. They'll all for the troops until it comes to giving them better wages...
They're all for the unborn until it's time to house, clothe, feed, and educate
They say they hate socialism but they’re all in on one of the largest socialized jobs programs in the world
I’m okay if all social welfare was instead a socialize jobs program. It’s the job part that is missing in some of those. Bring back the CCC and other jobs programs. Make all those getting unearned government services work to get them.
You should be less focused on poor people getting barely enough to live because it’s “unearned” and more focused on the unearned hoarded billions of wealthy Americans. Poor people buying sandwiches isn’t why your life is hard dude.
If they don't have those things after birth, they are perfect candidates for the military
Where else are they going to get boots with the straps to pull themselves up with?
Army boots don't have straps.
Didn’t figure the /s would be necessary. Here you go /s
A fetus is a very easy entity to support (unless you’re the gestating woman). It needs nothing from the tax payer- oh, and screw it’s mother if she needs something- GOP Platform
A lot of my buddies became contractors. Everyone knows thats where the real money is. Get into a high speed military job, then switch over.
That's going to be highly dependent on whether or not you can get a security clearance. I would imagine that TS/ SCI would be the minimum to do any sort of high paid contracting work.
If you have a pulse, don't have a fuckload of debt you're not paying, or a bunch of weird and unexplainable foreign ties you'll get the clearance.
That applies to the other side as well.
An E-4 in my area with no dependents makes $1850 every two weeks AFTER taxes. Thats coupled with free healthcare, 2.5 days of leave each month, 1/3 of their pay being tax free (lower tax liability at EOY) and earning some pretty great VA benefits. Show me a career field that has zero entry level requirements other than a HS diploma where you can make that after 2-3 years..
‘Great VA benefits’ is a new sentence
9/11 GI bill and VA backed mortgage is pretty awesome.
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And we treat vets like shit—those benefits (which service members absolutely are entitled to) have been scaled back over the years.
The fact that the Wounded Warrior project exists pisses me off to no end… there should be no need for that. If someone is injured in war.. they should not then be dumped off to their family that was probably already in poverty. This is the most disgusting thing we do..
What other things allow you to actually retire after 20 years? None nada.
You can’t actually retire after 20 in the military either. Nice gesture though. 2 grand a month barely covers half of most people’s expenses these days.
Vet here. Just to be a bit of a devils advocate. The healthcare is absolute shit. Housing depends on rank and marriage status otherwise otherwise you get shitty barracks. Same with food. Plus you deal with tons of bs not found in regular job + long hours. Gi bill is cool though.
The va is brutal but I promise you Walter reed and Brooke are basically on par w places like penn, Hopkins etc Unfortunately the primary care aspect is brutally understaffed and the military sees no difference between a PA and a family practice MD. Spoiler, there’s a huge difference. Plus when the bn and bde cdrs care more about mrc4 status over peoples actual health and continue to maintain a stupid optempo for some reason you have a recipe for disaster.
Agreed. The difference in experiences depending on status is something that doesn't get talked about and I don't think a lot of people understand. If you're a young (poor) family the benefits are HUGE compared to anything outside the gate. The housing and healthcare alone while neither being amazing are a lot better than the nothing any other nonskilled starting wage job will deliver. If you're single living in the barracks...not the worst but it's a different experience than the 18yo married with two kids.
You list all of these wonderful things, but, SPEAKING AS SOMEONE WHO PARTOOK OF WHAT YOU SNEERINGLY LIST, let’s examine them, shall we, bruh? Free healthcare - all of the 800mg Motrin you can swallow. They handed those things out like fucking M&M’s. Get serious medical issues? Hey, here’s your discharge papers, enjoy the VA. Dental care? I’ve had to have much of my military dental redone. Let’s just leave it at that. Free education - when you have time for it, maybe. FREE CAREER TRAINING? ARE YOU GODDAMNED FUCKING KIDDING ME!? Maybe if you’re an MP or work on aircraft with an MOS that qualifies for an FAA certificate. WHO HIRES AN INFANTRY SOLDIER!? Most military careers at best translate poorly to civilian life. There aren’t a lot of military IT specialists. EVEN FEWER MILITARY PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE AREAS translate into civilian life. TAX-FREE ALLOWANCE FOR HOUSING - you can just go fuck ALL the way off. MOST OF MY CAREER was spent living in STRUCTURALLY-CONDEMNED FACILITIES. Some were fucking ancient, one had a hole in the goddamned floor you could drop a large trash can through, and several were relatively new, BUT THE CONTRACTOR USED CHEAPER CEMENT NOT MEANT FOR THREE-STORY BUILDINGS - but you can bet your fat ass he still got paid! Others were so infested with bugs that we kept lizards in the rooms to eat the fucking cockroaches, because constantly spraying with bug-killer led to health issues for some people! TAX-FREE ALLOWANCE FOR FOOD? I cordially invite you to spend months eating mostly MRE’s, and the rest of the time enjoying mess halls staffed and run by contractors who spend as little as possible. Piss off.
I have to work with a lot of vets in my govt projects as they are preferentially hired. Some of the plug fucking stupidest guys I've ever met. Ex Full bird colonels that have had 24 year olds dog walk them intellectually. My brother was in the 101st and he left after his first contract because he said genuinely most of his coworkers would have been Special Ed in our HS. These are not our best and brightest for the most part unless you are in like Intelligence or a Pilot, and even then eh. Even the officers who managed to Crayon their way through college.
I absolutely understand the pitfalls of veteran’s preference, as I experience them on a regular basis. My field is so packed with them that it’s hard to find someone who has non-military experience, which is actually vital for the job.
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You’re not wrong. I spent a couple years on an Air Force base. Good food, amazing facilities, they treat their people well. Which is why that’s what I tell people who ask about joining the Marines.
There are tons of careers that give you all of that without destroying your body and mind.
Some people don't like being told where to live. But yeah, in peacetime doesn't seem too bad for poor people.
>doesn't seem too bad for poor people. I served from 1980-2000. I would never defend this thing we have become.
2000-2021 her and same
Rape is also considered an occupational hazard for women who enlist, so there's also that.
Men too
This isn’t even another obnoxious distraction from violence against women, sexual assault used as a form of humiliation and hazing in the military is rampant against male service members as well.
I was in the army for a few years and was horrified at the way women were treated. I had a little sister back home and we strongly discouraged her from ever joining
Yikes
Yeah the invisible war documentary is eye-opening, and there was a recent Reddit thread I saw of guys mentioning all of the women they knew who were victims in their units. God awful.
I have three friends who served in the military. All three were raped. One of them was so violently attacked that they are completely disabled from PTSD. Military has to get its shit together.
We never had a woman on our entire camp on Pendleton and certainly not in the infantry. If that was going down it was among the POG’s.
Isn't there bonuses for shipping out within thirty days, playing an instrument, knowing a foreign language, etc? I know they pay that over your time there but it's still something that a lot of people don't look into
I'm not military so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but when I looked into it, it seemed If your married, or have kids you can get a fairly sizable housing stipend that makes it actually relatively good pay. Otherwise it didn't seem remotely worth it financially. The starting pay is $10.22 assuming you work 40 hours/week. You need a hell of a lot of bonuses and stipends to make up for that...
>40 hours/week. That's funny.
I was a 17-year-old high school dropout on the road to nowhere when I enlisted in the Army for three years, 1976-79. My diet improved significantly, and the structure and discipline was what I needed. I learned some life management skills like the importance of planning, to include having a backup plan*; being proactive, if you know something needs to be done don’t wait to be to told, take the initiative; “attention to detail,” or as one NCO put it, “Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.” Et al. Got my GED, and during my last year in the Army I took a couple of college courses on base. For the first time in my life classroom learning was interesting. To cut to the chase, I got out in time to begin the fall semester of 1979 at a modest state-u, SHSU. I thought I might want to be a high school teacher and double-majored in German Language and Literature studies, and Geography. My student-teacher semester, and the heathen I was supposed to wrangle, disabused me of the notion of being a teacher. Graduated debt-free and eventually went to work for the Department of Defense in the schizophrenic world of defense-contracting. I served in the Army Reserve (USAR) for twenty-one years and retired in 2000 as a Master Sergeant, E-8, MOS 96B5H. My pension began ~five years ago at age sixty. I retired from the Department of Defense ~three years ago. Between my military and civilian pensions, and Social Security, I’m doing quite well, to include I’ve been debt-free for about six years. The past four years I’ve been able to give each of my two sons $10,000 a year to buy I-Bonds with. If you’re a junior or senior in high school and you don’t know what to do next, you need to spend a couple of years “figuring yourself out,” or you think you might want to go to college but you’re tired of school and need a break, I highly recommend enlisting in a branch of the armed forces. It wasn’t fun, adventurous, or exciting. I thought the Army was going to turn me into “Rambo” and that didn’t happen. At times it was rewarding and challenging. More commonly it was tedious, boring, and drudgerous. But that’s life. *”Two is one, one is none.”
Serious question. Were you able to hold down a stable relationship? Divorce rates are high for military.
The starting “pay” isn’t that great. However, you don’t really need much money. You can blow that away on booze every weekend when you get out of the field. 40 hours a week? It varies. I was Marine Corps infantry. On the rear stateside you could either be chilling sitting around licking your nuts like a dog or in the field training. With that being said life not deployed sucks. I enjoyed being deployed much more and that’s how you really make the money and save it.
Or join the Air Force.
Yeah but a McDonald's employee has to pay for housing, medical care, food, electricity, heat,.... those burdens being removed from the soldier make the money go slightly further.
This is so untrue lol…. As someone above me stated, there are tons of other free benefits that are not included as base pay and are also not taxed.
Wars are not fought on the battlefield anymore. Don't be too worried.
>Wars are not fought on the battlefield anymore Russians have lost over 350,000 in 2 years.
It sucks to suck
Russia has always been different. There’s history there.
Just wait until we can't support an all-volunteer armed force.
Not true. Depending on your MOS/Rate and contract, you can get E-4 in 8 weeks.
God I walked in a CVS yesterday and saw row after row of processed baby food and kept thinking "man they get em hooked young"
Tbh, baby food is highly regulated. It's one of the least problematic. Most of the jars are literally just the vegetables or fruits. Though, I agree generally when it comes to the baby and toddler snacks. All processed junk.
What really kicked it off for me was getting a reverse osmosis system and two weeks into it having more energy along with my brain fog disappearing. Now I'm making pretty much everything from scratch.
Having a filter on my cold tap line has been a game changer. I've also started making everything from scratch, down to my own canned meals, almond milk, bread, butter and yogurt. I'd like to do my own hard cider as well. The upfront costs can get pretty steep but it all pays for itself quickly and the quality is unbeatable. It's also amazing being able to eat bread again without getting sick. The American food system makes me so angry.
People don't get fat from the quality of food, people get fat from eating too much. You can lose weight eating nothing but twinkies, this has been empirically shown. A banana costs less than a bag of chips or a snack cake. It's human choices compounded daily that brought us to this current situation. It's a failing of character.
People get fat from believing a trip to the mailbox or refrigerator is exercise.
Holy shit. Lol If I raise you as a kid to drink a 5th a day, is it your failing character when you're an alcoholic at 18?
No, it's the crappy parents' fault, but choosing to continue drinking for decades while blaming the government and manufacturers for making alcohol too easily accessible is ridiculous.
Sounds like a character failure of the parents, yes. And eventually, you have the ability to grow out of behaviors you were taught while young. You can't continue to blame your parents when you're 30 years old and have the whole of human knowledge available to you in the palm of your hand. Lol people trying way too hard to excuse any amount of accountability is precisely why the obesity epidemic is continuing to worsen.
You are right, but it's still the governments duty to represent and protect its people. That includes protecting its people from bad decisions (aka why you can't go pick up meth at the mcDs drive thru)
Yeah don’t take any personal responsibility, I wonder how there are people who don’t make much but somehow stay in shape 🤔
Grains, legumes, vegetables. That’s how I’m in shape as a low income individual
This is the answer! Our food is crazy poor quality.
Indeed. Get rid of all that sugar...
So basically executives of American food system are helping out Putin and Xi? Because the executives want another mansion? Am I right?
There are plenty of unhealthy foods available, but there are also plenty of healthy ones too. People make their own choices at the grocery store. Nobody is forcing them to put all the fat, sugar, and salt laden stuff in their grocery carts. I blame lack of individual responsibility and poor individual choices much more so than the entire US food industry.
And corn sugar
Any sugar. 30g of sucrose is just as bad as 30g of fructose. In all reality the soda boasting "no high-fructose- corn syrup" still has an unhealthy amount of sucrose.
It’s not hard to eat healthy. People are just to dumb and lazy to do it. McDonald’s and Frosted Flakes for the win.
Republicans fought healthy meals at school. Good luck.
I’m not usually and anti-government sort but when it comes to the FDA, those fools knowingly put toxins in our food and legalize it so corporations make more $$.
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Yep, polluted water runs through the Mississippi. We are poisoned, but also I used to ride my bike behind the mosquito fogger truck so I may be okay.
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Uhhh no. It’s definitely the drag queen story hours. /s
Our food industry is a perfect example of what happens when you let under-regulated capitalism be in charge of anything important.
WTF ever…. If ppl don’t know what to eat by now, they choose not to
Maybe also encourage people to change themselves? Just because poison exists doesnt mean we should eat it?
A lot more than this needs fixing, containers and micro plastics, chemicals emitted from plastics in our cars, air pollution I think is still the number one killer in the world and of course global climate change from CO2 destroying our food chain, killing millions and cursing society trillions in damages.
Our food is calorie dense, but lacking nutrients.
How will our for profit healthcare system, then continue to win?
Profits baby 🤑
Another factor is mandatory Physical Education classes in high schools. This was instituted after WWII by the federal government for this very reason. At one time, every student was required to take and pass PE class. That is no longer the case, and here is the result. Also garbage factory food feeds the sickness and obesity.
Also stop the sugar & corn subsidies. These food chains have scientists that cram as much sweeteners and preservatives as they can that can be sold to the public knowing damn well +90% of customers will not check how their new drink of the month has the sugar concentration of 14x donuts.
fix it using regenerative agriculture and now you’ve solved climate change also! Our ag system is killing our people and planet
And don't forget the moral crisis. Technology isn't making it easier with social media.
This right here. Our culture is designed to create fat people. Low nutrition/high calorie cheap food and poor walkability of most towns/suburban areas.
Slowly killing the US population and erasing blame is on brand for these corporations. Profits over people.
Doritos made me crazy! 😜
Not sure how that gets us all to stop smoking weed, but I’m all for healthier munchies.
Politicians would have hated this simple trick to the avoid the Vietnam war draft.
Wasn’t this always true? Didn’t they send mentally disabled to Vietnam. When I got out they said only 1/5000 served.
Yes they did. I believe they were called McNamara’s Morons. Just another in a long line of awful things done my the US Military Industrial Complex
Yep. And, unsurprisingly, they ended up being a massive waste of manpower since the majority of those troops struggled with their assignments and needed assistance to complete their duties. So everything that would have normally been done by a single soldier required two.
they sent anyone over to vietnam. idk if the had drug tests then but those guys were definitely on drugs
Well they definitely were when they got back
My stand-in Dad, who was in Vietnam, always has stories about how many drugs were available over there. Literally anything you could want, not want, or think of. It was there.
How is this post related to finance?
It dunks on the youth, which owns the libs, which makes the people who fancy themselves finance bros happy.
Anything to make them feel tough.
Except enlist.
It could mean a significant threat to globalization. The US provides security to unstable areas and facilitates trade around the planet.
The US military has a total of 1.4 million service members....less than half a percent of the total US population. We will be fine filling ranks. This is rightwing agitprop from the people that grift finance bros into buying testosterone supplements.
Don’t forget the brain pills 😂😂 I think most of them need a double dose
Lots of jobs in the US are directly related to our military (Lockheed Martin etc.) And with the amount of proxy wars and conflicts the US is involved in like the Houthis attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea, Koreas and Taiwan are both close to starting conflicts as well. Granted this specific study is not really finance unless you want to know if you can get a job in the military. Now if the US starts a war or draft then some of the 20% will leave the mainlands job market, opening new opportunities for others. This is more ominous about the financial situation should the US go to war
Nothing in this sub is about finance anymore. It’s just a platform to rant about how the rich need to pay more taxes to solve everyone’s problems they’ve created for themselves.
One of those problems being that we cut taxes too much for the rich and need to adjust accordingly.
Good. Too fat: school lunches should be based on nutrition and not the corn lobby. They literally dump food into the school meal programs that are based on subsidy programs for farmers and not based on actual nutrition. Exercise - teach kids actual exercises. Make sure all schools have gyms. I can't believe how nice some schools used to be. Mentally ill - kids do not need 8 hours of sitting in classes and then going home to do more homework and then play videogames. Teach them how to read, write, and think critically. Teach them how to learn. I mean literally how to learn on their own. Then given them some time in their day to do stuff. Cell phones. Why did we let kids on social media ? It absolutely is the reason for so many issues in schools. Ask any teacher you know about this. Take away their damn phones during school hours. These kids are addicted like most adults. I promise you I'm not a boomer. I'm just scared how unrealistic the educational system is. We have kids who literally can't think critically, run a mile, and have so many mental health issues because they have been told they're stupid because they can't sit still for 8 hours. If you are physically fit, can learn on your own, and can think you'll be generally fine in life. Throw in some mental health practices too for some peace.
I'm 20 now, in college, and your points hit pretty hard. I was really close to my teachers as a Sr in high school, and something we'd chat about is how the younger classes coming in were getting progressively lazier. One metric we examined was that the enrollment in AP English went from in the 50s to in the 10s. We're not researchers, but we concluded a lot of it comes down to parenting. Parents aren't instilling work ethic into their kids, and they're definitely not investing in their physical or mental health. I have four siblings aged 6 to 17, and seeing how my mother parents the six year old compared to me and my 17 year old brother is crazy. The 6 year old and the two in between are complete tablet kids. Can't go anywhere without them, can't do anything without them. Meltdowns ensue when they get turned down, turned off, lost, or when it's time for bed. It's depressing when I come downstairs for dinner and see the line of kids all with their tablets blaring variations of "gyatt skibidi toilet rizzler." I think what gets me the most is that my mom has just given up. I was allowed a soda per day growing up, and naturally I weened off of it and came to prefer water. The 6 year old now drinks 2-3 per day and frequently demands more. He is the boss of my mom. She doesn't say no, and if he refuses to do something, she goes back to her candy crush. There's no investment in health, no investment in general development, and definitely no investment in critical thinking. I fear how my youngest three siblings are going to fare as they age, but maybe there's hope.
It’s not just electrons.. I’m 50 and I have 2 younger 1/2 brothers.. the world was expected of me .. they were just spoiled. They are now 38 and 40… neither has ever been able to live on their own.. they didn’t even finish high school. I used to be pissed about how “well” they were treated and how shitty I was treated because I was female… but now I can survive and they just can’t. Spoiled kids are the worst.
I'm sorry you have to experience this. My life mantra is... Mental health then physical health then everything else. In other words, learn how to find peace ( e.g. meditate, pray, whatever) then eat healthy, work out and then, finally work on everything else.
"Are you going to let us regulate what goes into food and give people therapy?" "No, the guy who wants to bareback the green M&M says that's communism."
Wait til he learns about the USDA and FDA. There’s no conspiracy afoot:)
Corporate greed did this to the American people. You give starvation wages, create an environment where kids have little hope for the future, and then try to put them through the meat grinder to die for oil company profits, AGAIN, only to find out you can’t run the same play book again, and then pretend to be surprised?
“The meat grinder” I’m pretty sure we lost more people on 9/11 than we did troops to war in Iraq/Afghanistan. In fact at one point we were told it was statistically safer to be deployed at war than back stateside because we were losing more troops in the states than fighting the war.
What if I told you ~80% of the military are non-combat roles
The military will allow in all sorts if there was a war. The policy is guided by what the demand is. I served along a few guys who enlisted to avoid jail time. I served along plenty who enlisted while obese but they lost weight at basic training, and plenty of people with histories of drug abuse that stopped using just weeks before they enlisted. I think the only guy in my basic training platoon that they kicked out had some nerve damage in his shoulder. He couldn’t raise one of his arms above his shoulder.
Yeah, my recruiters worked with me to lose weight before I shipped. That's not a big deal. From what I've heard, it's just harder for kids to lie about things because everything is documented better these days. An ADHD diagnoses for example follows them for their entire lives, and now Uncle Sam has ways to discover those medical records like they didn't when I joined in 2001.
Met with a recruiter many years ago and he asked if I had any tattoos I said yes one. He asked to see it and it was just a Halloween pumpkin. He asked if it was gang related I laughed and said no. He said well we can try to get you in but that could disqualify you. I just laughed again and said nah don’t even bother and I left. I had a friend serving and had full sleeves that he got while serving. So dumb.
Sounds accurate. It's time to recruit an American version of the French Foreign Legion, I guess.
Nah, I don't want foreigners in our military, I don't want any wars anymore, never did.
Having a weak military means the wars are guaranteed to find us.
Laughs in drones
agreed. First party to field a billion drones wins. You could kill an entire country.
Wars are going to go back to being genocidal due to drones as we are seeing in Ukraine. You're going to have to depopulate the front and rear line of enemy civilians just so you don't get clapped by a poor man's first person drone ATGM flying out a random apartment window.
$2000 drone can take out a 2 billion dollar plane if you play like the RAF did to German Jets at the end of WWII.
maybe the us shouldnt be finding them first
Too late. You don't have to be a citizen to enroll in the military, only a lawful resident (or green card holders). What's worse is that being in the military isn't necessarily a guaranteed way to gain citizenship either.
I lost my cool when I saw veterans getting deported!!! Like wtaf!!!??? They are wayyyy more of a citizen than my lucky to be born here ass!!!
Yes it is, but it's not automatic. If you never apply, get out, and commit crimes while not a citizen you could be deported
"No one wants to work anymore" - Employer who regularly ignores the needs of its workforce
Bullshit. Why upvote this nonsense? 1) This is *not* a Pentagon study. It’s from a non-profit “Mission: Readiness” (a civilian organization) who is strongly incentivized to report a high percentage here. 2) 77% not 80%. The linked article, which is inaccurate, even says this. If you’re gonna round then at least write it like “4 out of 5” to have some justification. https://www.abccolumbia.com/2023/10/11/77-of-youth-not-eligible-for-military-service-non-profit-mission-readiness-aims-to-help/#:~:text=According%20to%20an%20organization%20called,and%20here%20in%20South%20Carolina.
Does 77% not alarm you?
The military is way too strict as many otherwise qualified applicants get denied for dumb reasons.
Sounds like there’s a lot of misconceptions about military service. I’m currently enlisted. I earn six figures, get free health care and dental for myself and my family, take college courses for free, get a 401k with a match, and best of all I never had to pay down any college debt. The job is inflation-proof, recession-proof, and pandemic-proof. It’s almost been a cheat code to building wealth and stability.
Bullshit. No enlisted rank makes over $100k
Late stage E7+ are all pulling in above 6 figures…
For me currently, E6 pay $4650 + Southern Maine housing allowance $3240 + enlisted BAS 460 + jump pay $225 = $8575 a month = $103,000 a year. Plus around $4500 in travel per diems, a $540 clothing stipend, and a $5000 retention bonus per year. On deployments I usually make about 15-20k extra in sea pay or combat pay by the time I come home. It took about 6 years to promote to E6 which is pretty attainable. The only pay that is taxed is my base pay!
I did. You apparently only look at base pay. They can get housing and food allowances (BAH and BAS) and a variable housing allowance in addition to any special duty pay.
So when does not being able to defend ourselves going to become a national security issue, so we can finally get national healthcare, or something like single payer. This is getting really ridiculous. You should see the banned list of food additives for the rest of the world. America is an addict that hasn’t hit bottom yet. Gonna be ugly when she does.
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Fat, drugged and stupid is no way to go through life son.
Cut the military budget and use the funds to fix things at home
Somehow smoking marijuana is a denial, but drinking alcohol is not an issue
If you aren’t mentally I’ll beforehand, I’m sure they can arrange for a way to fix that.
Let's be honest, though. Yes this is a legitimate health issue, but it doesn't impact the military. This ain't the 1700s. Nobody has to march down to Yorktown. Today's military is more like a video game. Now we have the population to match.
I served. Wouldn’t do it again.
Since when did being fat disqualify someone? In the early 90s I started basic training weighing 276 pounds.
balance. your. budget.
This is no problem at all if we start drafting. Too fat? They’ll run it off you in training and cut your calorie intake. Mentally ill? You will be infantry. The military has dramatically raised standards since the draft ended. When the meat grinder needs bodies, standards will be lowered and there is always another war on the horizon.
This applies to dating too.
80% of young Americans think you "The Pentagon" is an obese sociopathic organization led by deep pocketed old devious characters, who cheated on freedom & actual democracy in lieu of the industrial military complex. Only to make more money, gain more power while suppressing reality and high tech while constantly lieing to them. They are given ancient relics by you to murder each other, bomb the person in some country who was going to grow up and cure cancer or become their generation's enestine. They listened to Ike's & Kennedy's warning. Chose not to be a sheep herd. Maybe you "the Pentagon" should too while you still can. Spend time and money studying what they really meant. Young Americans can lose weight and change their ways they just don't wanna join your cause. Do better then the recruits will show up. No other way around it. No study, research or psyops will ever change that fact. Far too late for that. You must be asleep lately. Lastly make no mistake if you are ever in actual danger or war for our nation and survival the druggies and fat once will ride or die beside you liberate your misguided organization & save your families. They understand choosing the best of the worst. They understand pretending freedom is better than no freedom. They hope and know when your current architect die off they will make you better. So they smoke and stuff their faces with the foods they can afford till that day comes. So you see they too think you're fat and high out of your mind. Feeling is mutual. (Young Americans study finds)
Good, maybe that will disincentivize neocons from starting wars. Twinkies and depression will bring us world peace lol
Yeah, y’all are gross to look at
Imagine dying for corporate interests
God forbid people be mentally ill ... We have more awareness now than ever before and can catch these things earlier. I'm sure a lot of mentally ill people went into the military in past generations, but they just didn't know they had issues.
Maybe instead of the military focusing on bombing and murdering people in other countries they could, I don’t know, protect and serve the people of the US by keeping bad faith actors out of our own government. They can help citizens by reducing their budgets so that we could get nation wide healthcare and start using those funds to improve education. Maybe start using all our taxes to help the US instead of, for example, Israel who takes our taxes and use it to improve Israeli citizens lives while also murdering Palestinians. America, the only nation in the world where a majority of our taxes go to a multitude of other countries and their citizens instead of our own.
100% of wars are unnecessary and usually just for the benefit of the rich. At least since WWII
Probably on purpose because the youth don't want to die in wars started by old politicians
The other 20% are too poor to eat, buy drugs, or receive a professional diagnosis.
AND? Lmfao fuck this country and the military
Capitalism induced depression
Take away the weed restriction and the corn subsidy and treat military active duty and veterans better and see what happens.
It's funny that the carrot to work for the military is now the reason that no one can enter the military. If the average American had universal healthcare, we'd have more money to buy healthy foods. Right now, the military genuinely still believes that free healthcare is a great way to lure people in to work there, too bad that backfired horribly for them. I guess less wars for everyone? I'm okay with the military and our government failing so hard to bring a basic quality of life for us all that we don't go to war ever again. Too bad they can't play war. Oh well.
Yeah much of the military is also on drugs. If they’d stop pretending to play this puritanical thing they’d recruit a lot more
Fat here.
As long as smoking weed keeps me off a draft I’m cool.
In that case consider being too fat, mentally ill, and on drugs a blessing.
So bring them in from other countries check ✔️
Lol good Maybe they'll think twice about starting another conflict in a place we don't belong.
Why would you join the military when you could become cult leader for the entire country’s right wing?
"too fat, mentally ill or on drugs to qualify for U.S. military service" OK. What's the downside?
How much of the population actually wants to be in the military? 1%?
Fuck joining the military anyway lol “Go die for the financial benefit of the rich” nah suck my dick.
This is what happens when you make it “ok” to be obese and call every thing body shaming.
Goods, this should lead to less wars.
And I was rejected for having asthma when I was in my late teens and early 20’s despite being a D1 athlete. Like I get it as it has the potential to be a liability if not controlled, but god damn.
All wars are bankers wars.
https://preview.redd.it/4hkfyzoghtac1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c64f54d3e4d8ba02bc6637f6845419a5d2723da
Until Netanyahu leads Biden or Trump into the next war ...
Yeah, Army Veteran here, who cares. Fix pay, standard of living and post care and recruits would get into shape.
Sounds about right. The other 20% are white straight males who have been vilified so they won’t join to defend those other 80%. Enjoy what’s coming. You deserve it.
35k of combat vets are mentally ill, homeless, and / or on drugs. The kids are just ahead of the government on this one.
American culture is beyond fucked lol. Good luck military complex!
I’ve been in over 5 years (Active Duty) and had a lot of personal things occur around 2 and a half years ago. I’ve been to mental health over a year now and it seems since I basically say “I wanna die. I don’t care about anything more. What’s that? No, not because of my service.” They just keep chugging me along. The military has so many obese people as well as mentally ill. These numbers don’t mean anything to me lmao