I always see this and not that it's wrong, but I feel like it doesn't give the full scope. While you're active duty you have the option to practically live rent and food free if you want. Decent healthcare for the whole family, possibly college tuition for not only you but also your kids. Outside of specific union jobs you really can't get this anywhere else. Also you can retire after like 20 years and collect a paycheck while you do a different job.

Yes the income brackets for enlistment have moved upward in recent decades, and I do think that is due mostly to that income bracket being more easily propagandized, but we all know the stats on how desperate for money even the "middle classes are" so it feels weird to act like it's a bunch of petit bourgeois people doing the enlistment when it's not.