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“ banning recruiters from schools is juvenile and disgusting” And I think letting them in is problematic . They only target the poor schools anyway. Which actu

“ banning recruiters from schools is juvenile and disgusting” And I think letting them in is problematic . They only target the poor schools anyway. Which actually is pretty ‘disgusting’ to me. You don’t get to claim the moral high ground here. Nor do I, but I wasn’t attempting to by using words like ‘disgusting’ to describe any difference in opinion. Why did you do that? Why are you unable to talk about this without reaching for such obvious rhetorical props?

mlhpdx 2y ago
> They only target the poor schools anyway. The three schools around me are among the richest in the state and all have recruiters visit regularly. What’s your source for that belief?
- psunavy03 2y ago
  Prejudice, most likely.
  - consteval 2y ago
    Or, more likely, the reality that the US military industrial complex is built off the dream of upwards social mobility for impoverished Americans. The US has very little social programs, on purpose. Those social programs ARE the military. If you need help to pull you out of poverty, you go into the military. Then you get education, healthcare, affordable housing, and guaranteed work - the typical social benefits you'd see in a modern democratic socialist nation. They're simply "rebranded" to fit the American dream, and, in turn, provide the military with a steady supply of warm bodies. The military, at it's core, is nothing more than a work program and tiny little socialist nation within the US. The rich don't join the military because they don't have to. These social benefits are for average to poor Americans.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
psunavy03 2y ago
They don't actively target poor schools. The military recruits from the middle three quintiles of the population; it is literally a middle-class insitution by definition. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military I called it disgusting because it disgusts me when people immaturely tar military service as immoral or lesser. There is no shame in serving the duly-elected government of a constitutional liberal democracy, and every human society which exists needs a military. Witness Ukraine.
- petsfed 2y ago
  I think its more complicated than that. There is certainly a lingering, and I don't think unjustified, perception that recruiters prefer the desperate and the easily swayed, even if the leadership does not. This dates back to the Vietnam era, and Project 100,000. Part of it is that middle-class as defined on that page is specifically those who are poor enough to not be able to afford college from their family's preexisting wealth, but not so poor that they qualify for need-based full-rides at most schools. So you get a lot of kids joining up for the GI bill, and not necessarily out of a surplus of innate patriotism or sense of civic duty. Not all, I'd say about 1/3 of the people I've known who served signed up specifically for the GI bill, but those that did joined the Navy or the Air Force, or they signed up prior to September 11 (one friend signed up in August of 2001, just before the start of his senior year of high school). There's also the issue that as family income drops, the odds of meeting the entry requirements also drops. As family income drops, the odds of a having a criminal record rises (this is true for a lot of different reasons, only some of them the would-be applicant's fault). For all of their recruiting issues, the military still has baseline occupational standards. You have to be able to place high enough on the ASVAB to be admitted to your preferred branch of service, and as a standardized test, it still correlates to socioeconomic background. That is, if you're poor, you're probably going to do worse on the ASVAB, regardless of your actual aptitude. I am sympathetic to the desire to keep recruiters out of high schools and colleges, but that's mainly because it seems perverse to me to let kids sign up to kill and die (and risk prison for trying to weasel out of it) before they're old enough to buy alcohol or rent cars. I think we should keep recruiters out of high schools and colleges for the same reason we should ban student loans: most 18 year-olds simply lack the experience and discernment to understand what they're signing up for.

mlhpdx 2y ago

> They only target the poor schools anyway. The three schools around me are among the richest in the state and all have recruiters visit regularly. What’s your source for that belief?

psunavy03 2y ago
Prejudice, most likely.
- consteval 2y ago
  Or, more likely, the reality that the US military industrial complex is built off the dream of upwards social mobility for impoverished Americans. The US has very little social programs, on purpose. Those social programs ARE the military. If you need help to pull you out of poverty, you go into the military. Then you get education, healthcare, affordable housing, and guaranteed work - the typical social benefits you'd see in a modern democratic socialist nation. They're simply "rebranded" to fit the American dream, and, in turn, provide the military with a steady supply of warm bodies. The military, at it's core, is nothing more than a work program and tiny little socialist nation within the US. The rich don't join the military because they don't have to. These social benefits are for average to poor Americans.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

psunavy03 2y ago

They don't actively target poor schools. The military recruits from the middle three quintiles of the population; it is literally a middle-class insitution by definition. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military I called it disgusting because it disgusts me when people immaturely tar military service as immoral or lesser. There is no shame in serving the duly-elected government of a constitutional liberal democracy, and every human society which exists needs a military. Witness Ukraine.

petsfed 2y ago
I think its more complicated than that. There is certainly a lingering, and I don't think unjustified, perception that recruiters prefer the desperate and the easily swayed, even if the leadership does not. This dates back to the Vietnam era, and Project 100,000. Part of it is that middle-class as defined on that page is specifically those who are poor enough to not be able to afford college from their family's preexisting wealth, but not so poor that they qualify for need-based full-rides at most schools. So you get a lot of kids joining up for the GI bill, and not necessarily out of a surplus of innate patriotism or sense of civic duty. Not all, I'd say about 1/3 of the people I've known who served signed up specifically for the GI bill, but those that did joined the Navy or the Air Force, or they signed up prior to September 11 (one friend signed up in August of 2001, just before the start of his senior year of high school). There's also the issue that as family income drops, the odds of meeting the entry requirements also drops. As family income drops, the odds of a having a criminal record rises (this is true for a lot of different reasons, only some of them the would-be applicant's fault). For all of their recruiting issues, the military still has baseline occupational standards. You have to be able to place high enough on the ASVAB to be admitted to your preferred branch of service, and as a standardized test, it still correlates to socioeconomic background. That is, if you're poor, you're probably going to do worse on the ASVAB, regardless of your actual aptitude. I am sympathetic to the desire to keep recruiters out of high schools and colleges, but that's mainly because it seems perverse to me to let kids sign up to kill and die (and risk prison for trying to weasel out of it) before they're old enough to buy alcohol or rent cars. I think we should keep recruiters out of high schools and colleges for the same reason we should ban student loans: most 18 year-olds simply lack the experience and discernment to understand what they're signing up for.