> Yoshie:
>
> > The volunteer military in the United States depends on the working-
> > poor draft. Rather than drafting the poorest of the poor (whose
> > physical health is too poor, whose education too neglected, whose
> > criminal record too extensive, whose attitudes too badass, etc.),
> the
> > Pentagon preys on the sons and daughters of the working poor (those
> > whose parents are relatively regularly employed, earn too much [the
> > household income of $25,000-40,000 <http://www.heritage.org/
> Research/
> > NationalSecurity/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/
> > getfile.cfm&PageID=85094>] to qualify for most or all forms of
> means-
> > tested public assistance and need-based grants [cf. "Department of
> > Education to Tighten Pell Grant Eligibility," <http://www.cnn.com/
> > 2004/EDUCATION/12/23/pell.grants/>], etc., and yet too poor not to
> > worry about paying bills, especially big-ticket items like health
> > care and children's' college tuitions).
>
> I think this statement perfectly exemplifies what is wrong with the
> US Left - its fundamentalist religious belief in a myth, and its
> inability to think critically beyond that myth. If empirical
> evidence contradicts that myth the effort is taken to neutralize
> the evidence rather than revise the myth.
Empirically, "the working-poor draft" describes the economic strata from which the largest proportions of recruits are drawn. The number of recruits rises sharply at the threshold of $20,000 and declines steeply at the peak of $40,000 in absolute numbers (at <http:// www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/ security/getfile.cfm&PageID=85094>); and differences between recruit and civilian income distributions also show that households that make less than $20,000 and more than $50,000 are underrepresented and those in-between are over-represented (at <http://www.heritage.org/ Research/NationalSecurity/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/ getfile.cfm&PageID=85096>).
Moreover, we also have to consider the caveat emptor that the Heritage Foundation man himself notes in passing: "Income was compared on a household basis, not an individual basis, meaning that recruits’ income was defined by their household of origin" (at <http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda05-08.cfm>), for the Pentagon stopped collecting individual household income data of recruits in 1999 (at <http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05952.pdf>). If the charts were based upon individual household incomes rather than recruits' neighborhoods, it is likely that the highest income brackets would be even more underrepresented.
Chuck0 wrote:
> Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> > With that in mind, the "working poor draft" and other populist
> leftist
> > dogmas, such as that the poor have no responsibility for their
> own actions,
> > and that responsibility rests solely with the elites, or that the
> existing
> > institutional order is nothing but a conspiracy of the elite, are
> examples
> > of the regressive problemshift by regression to the founding
> "principles" or
> > myths in this particular case.
>
> Amen. I've run into this idiocy more than a few time lately, with
> so-called leftists and anarchists arguing *in favor* of the military
> because it provides an "option" for working class people. Some of this
> has to do with a shallow leftist worship of anything the working class
> does. The more common argument is that working class people are forced
> by poverty into the military. Poverty certainly limits options, but
> plenty of poor young people find a way to survive without joining the
> military. It's kind of sick to hear anti-war people arguing in
> favor of
> poor people joining the military!
Empirically understanding who actually tends to sign up for the military aids counter-recruitment efforts, for it can tell us where we need to do our work.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>