there is no line for handing out money... no, to grease you palms with scholarships, you have to be able to enter the system... that means lots of paperwork that gives even ME pause.

as for personal experiance... i was recruited for nuc school by the navy. i took their tests and broke their machine and, for a moment, was wowed by their promises. but i didn't NEED what they were offering in return for what they wanted from me.

i cannot speak for the people who go through basic at that third or fourth week... i can only speculate... and once again, my gut tells me to look at the support mechanisms for the poor. IF they wanted to drop out, what would they have to go back to? Their families, who might have benefited from their gainful employment? Hmm...

There's another thing I've noticed... and it may just be my imagination, but of all the prideful people in the world, oftentimes the poor have the most. Methinks that many poor people who enlist are just too damn proud to quit.

So, once again, I see a system of recruitment set up to put the poor in harms way.


Now... It should be noted that I wish to make no moral assertion here, despite what it sounds like. Maybe it's "Just the way of things." Maybe what I've seen and thought all adds up to cooincedence. Maybe I'm completely wrong. But I DO think it should be thought about.

In a society where money is important, and one of the easiest ways to get that money is by joining the military, a lot of people will join the military for the money.

This is a joke, right?

Paperwork. How horrible. I bet it's easier than running 5 miles before sunrise every morning, and that's just the beginning of the day.

One of my cousins did that. He spent 6 years on an Ohio class submarine, then got out and started making money. He's working in Thailand now, maintaining a reactor for some company.

You're grasping at straws now. Why can't you accept that the vast majority of people who volunteer for the military do it because that's what they want to do?

I have no idea what you mean with this.

yes, well, there's nothing that i can do about that.

in my opinion, not really,

my sister joined because she was impressed by the after service school opportunities they provide in the manner of scholarships and offered to take care of all of her legal issues...

my co workers son joined because he decided he did not want to work manual labor flipping burgers to get through college, he's now a new naval recruit...

it may not be as simple as money, because in reality, they don't get paid so much, but in america where the only way to afford education and health care is to be rich or in the military, not many young people are left with many options...maybe that's why bush is letting america go to hell...passive recruitment?

Of course it wasn't a joke, it's basically "The Path of Least Resistance."
People prefer the easier or lazier way to reach a goal.
It's an inherent personality flaw, which usually stems from the fact that we are trying to reach our primary goal(Mating and reproducing), so if we can acquire a good deal of money then we can more readily do it(Cool car, new house, etc), thus meaning that we look for a way of getting money and see the military and their shiny big payrolls.

So we go: "Hey, I can either work Fast Food, get hated on by everyone, or I can join the military and have people praise me for being a Patriot and guarding the country!"

And the result? Join the military, get the money, hopefully get laid.
Tada.

The mind of the average Human is easy to figure out, no matter the gender.

Unfuckingbelievable

Yeah, I'm with Syn on that one.
You do /not/ have to be rich in order to get health care.
Or a good education.

You do need money though.

Even Wal-Mart has health insurance for their employees. All you need is a job.

Getting a job is the hard thing.
Really.
It is.

Fucking Wal*Mart "We need employees we need people to apply but we don't even bother talking at all to the people who do apply and we magically whisk away the applications so they no longer exist!"

Yup.
Pain in the ass.

By the by, we've gone off on a weird tangent(or whatever) now haven't we?

Heh.

I thought this was the capitalism thread.

a fulltime job paying nine dollars and hour, their healthcare plan is five hundred a month...for a family of four, and a part time job paying six dollars and fifty cents and hour, that does not have it available(childcare is outrageous and not exactly designed for jobs running past six pm, all i can find available are part time jobs)...rent is four hundred, electric runs about one hundred, phone about thirty and water is about forty dollars...add one hundred dollars for car insurance, twenty plus dollars a week in gase for two people working(it's a small, gas efficient neon), about one hundred dollars a week for groceries, and then two hundred dollars for a car payment...and add to that over ten thousand dollars for a two year olds dislocated elbow, we average little under twenty thousand a year, and that's too much to qualify for any help...so please, tell me where a happily married couple with two children, two jobs and a wold of bills can afford healthcare?

oh, and all this, taxes NOT inluded...

and how easy is it to qualify for grants, that are now being cut back as the cost of secondary schooling is going up, fortunately there's publix and my children are young enough that i don't have to worry about that...yet.

actually i find getting the job is the easy part, living on the income it provides is the challenge.

You need to move. You obviously live in an area that sucks. I've done it twice.

A family of four that earns less than 20K doesn't pay taxes. You get back more than you have witheld in Earned Income Credit. The ceiling on that is 29K. If you aren't getting that, then you are doing something wrong with your taxes.

And I find the opposite to be the case.

tax time is the only time we can count on having money for survival down here...

i would love to move...back to montana, things we're easy and nice there...even if the jobs seemed to have dried up...there were still ways.


relying on his mother's keen ability at taxes...i can see you're point there, they're the one's that got us stuck down here, the nicer the climate, the less family friendly, or is it because this is a bush run state?

i think it comes down experience, i've been working in the customer service area for over fifteen years...i have one of those personalities that makes people happy, happy people spend money and pleased customers return...i'm good for business.

Trust me when I say I've known many experienced people, one person who's even run his own business(before "big business" sent him packing), that couldn't land any jobs for months at a time.