"Financial desperation" is a subjective idea. I think many are joining up not because they are destitute but because they believe that joining will guarantee they wont be destitute. With the precarity of the job market I think its more the desire for financial stability. They have been convinced it is a safe bet.
Having lived in poor rural areas, Latinx, white, black, yes. It's very real, for steady income, insurance, housing, and education.
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.
Free healthcare might be
It's definitely a real thing, but it should be noted that some of the recruitment criteria filter out the actual poorest people in the country in subtle ways (you know, the requirements that they drop whenever they need more bodies), and in practice most of the professional military has always been from the middle class.
It does happen, primarily in non-white & immigrant communities, but not to the point that it's a serious talking point.
Most U.S. military personnel come from families that have some kind of money. Not rich or even bourgeoisie most of the time, just not struggling financially.
I knew a few guys who enlisted after high school:
#3 was the same guy in our US Government class to say that we should start wars whenever our economy starts to do poorly
a friend of my brother's is from Puerto Rico and he sustains that the only way he can actually be able to leave the United States is through joining the military since they are unable to get the money needed to leave the island. From what i know, i think some do actually go to the military for financial desperation, but ultimately because they dont know that there are other ways/dont understand how their service is aiding the United States in crippling their birth country
didnt many veterans get deported recently? at this point serving in the army is not guaranteed to help u get citizenship
Puerto Ricans are citizens.
yeah, it is not a good idea imo lol. The United States would just see him as some immigrant trying to destroy the greatness of the empire
The data I have seen points to new US military recruits, at least in recent years, being predominantly "middle class" basically to say they aren't people living in poverty, but are not coming from notable generational wealth either.
It is hard to get exact data, but I have seen multiple sources suggest that the $50k - 100k household income bracket is the biggest for military enlistment. Like this study for example
The people that I knew growing up who have since gone into the military (and I no longer have contact with) did it because someone in their family was in the military, none of them were poor. I think the whole propaganda and perception of the military being a force for good and virtuously defending the country plays a much bigger role than the money aspect, even though that perception, as we know, is extremely inaccurate.
50-65K a year is two people earning 15 dollars an hour at a fast food job and some welfare. That is nowhere near middle class. Those are solidly poverty wages, especially the second you add one, let alone two children.
Four out of the four people I know in the military joined because it was really the only way to get the education they wanted due to either poverty/living conditions or other hurdles to education that were easily bypassed by just joining a specific branch of the military. So I'd say yeah, it's a big selling point for a lot of ppl.
Edit to add some details. One joined because he was harassed by a principal and not able to finish programming courses in HS even though the teacher stood up for him. Joined air force to learn coding. Was middle class but options were difficult, 4yr in AF was easier path. The other three were all fairly, or extremely, poor. One of those was a marine, no actual action, and is also now a comrade.
I don't know their specific situations, so I don't want to assume too much, but I do wonder how much of this is just lacking knowledge on what other avenues there are to get help or refusing to take the less 'easy' path. My partner and I were able to make it through college by first living off of food stamps and federal/state aid, which was enough to pay for community college classes and part of rent, and both of us working part-time 10 - 20 hours a week at the college itself in low effort student roles. Was it busy? Yeah, but in some ways less so than just working a full-time job right now. But community college + financial aid should be enough of a boon to prevent a lot of people from having to join the military. There are 2-year degrees/certificates that start people out at decent enough wages, like phlebotomy, pharmacy tech, sleep study tech, automotive maintenance, etc. Lots of states have programs to help low income people pay for college, especially California. Some even have free bachelor's degrees for all residents of the state under a certain age or who haven't gotten one already.
It's cool and all that that worked for you, but you are right, you don't know their situations. You don't know what state they lived in. Or the utter lack of education and available information on these types of programs. Let's just say, where we are, isn't a nice state like California. Our area is more on the "cutting as much from education as possible" side of that spectrum. It was also not a time when Internet access was at the tips of your fingers. Add to this the predatory nature of these army recruiters and it's pretty easy pickins.
If wasn't doable in my early 20s. If I hadn't had $250 a month rent in a home lacking hear and ac (but for a wood stove and later, a k1 heater), I still had to rely on work part time a semester, skip the next to work like a dog and stack paper to return the next semester. And I'm old.
Some do but not nearly as many as the compatible left would have us believe
We are all in financial desperation, still doesn't give me the right to engage in imperialism.
not to mention what the US army does to financially desperate women in the countries theyre stationed in
I think whether people join out of desperation and whether it excuses them ethically are two different questions. And the answer to me is, if somebody commits war crimes, the reasons they had for joining don't absolve them of needing to be held accountable for war crimes. Why they joined can matter though, when considering things like: how loyal they are to the military, how interested they are in doing its bidding vs. doing just enough to keep a roof over their head, and so on. To what extent they are a true believer in the military as a force for good vs. someone who could be persuaded otherwise or demoralized easily.
It matters as a strategic question, if nothing else, because any enforcer of the place you live is someone you may have to fight if you're trying to confront the system and do something different, and the less people you have to directly fight, the better.
There's a lot of sorting that happens to recruits who join the US military. Most army and marine personnel are in supporting roles, and those are generally filled by the higher educated recruits who did have other potential opportunities in life... and then you can imagine who gets to be the cannon fodder on the frontlines, and then who is actually doing the atrocities. It's perverse.
The air force is where that dynamic is flipped, and the actual trigger-pullers are highly educated, accomplished people who could have done anything else with their life but cause death and misery. They are some of the most contemptible scum in the imperial core.
The peers I knew who joined were middling students who were struggling in community college while working shitty service jobs and thought the GI Bill was a better option. Two joined the Navy, hated it, but used the benefits to go to college.
An ex-gf's family had some wealth but was dysfunctional, so her dumbass older brother enlisted in the Marines (classic crayon eater) for status. Her wealthier, smarter, and more heartless step brother got recruited into navy intelligence.
I worked at a high school in a low income, majority minority area and we sent lots of kids to the Marines (for some reason, that was the only branch that ever came to our school. Edit, sorry, now that I think about it, many Filipino students joined the navy). The ones who joined were usually good students who didn't have any family support to attend college, so they saw the military as their only pathway out. Two visited me after their time in the service: one hated it and the other became a recruiter.
Yes but for many it's just an excuse
They absolutely do. Its the US military's number one recruiting tactic. Recruiters are notorious for targeting low income schools and arguing that only the military can lift you from poverty. This is a material fact of reality.
Whether you let that mitigate any blame on them is a separate ethical question. Usually recruits are also propagandized and ignorant of the US Military's crimes. Would you let that mitigate blame? Probably not.
Most people who join the military are not poor. Some are financially desperate for sure, but most aren't. They are usually from the middle class and/or from a military family.
Edit: here's another effective method of recruitment. This is the new COD. I wonder what kind of people they are targeting?
Lmao "full scale invasion" taking media talking points straight from 2022 huh
There's a parallel to joining a gang out of economic desperation. It's also helpful to keep in mind that mitigation doesn't have to be a get out of jail free card.
it's true; i would have joined if it were for don't ask / don't tell
I am assuming that you do not want to join it now?
i'm MUCH too old and out of shape for them now. lol
besides experience has forced me (and study has taught me) to understand how morally bankrupt the institution is; so still wouldn't join if i were younger and fitter anyways.
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