[lbo-talk] poverty draft

Daniel Davies d_squared_2002 at yahoo.co.uk
Mon Dec 19 00:57:54 PST 2005


Doug wrote:


>>And he agrees
that the notion of a poverty draft is bullshit. The military is made up of the "better" echelons of the working class.<<

Not sure that one follows from the other; the reductio ad absurdum of this would be that the Royal Regiment of Gurkhas is predominantly made up of the "better" echelons of Nepalese hill farmers, but I don't think anyone would claim that Gurkha recruitment doesn't have anything to do with poverty. Don't have much of an opinion on the US Army but based on the lads I knew who joined the Welsh Guards, recruitment is more driven by a lack of alternative prospects for doing something interesting - it's not so much that people are forced to join the army because the alternative is physical starvation, but there is a strong class element to it.

best dd

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