“This isn’t quite the place we were when the unpensioned Minutemen fought for America. They just returned to their private sector vocations.”
WRONG
http://vagensearch.com/AmericanRevolution/Pensions.html
This is an all volunteer force. Many of these men have permanent disabilities caused by too many jumps, too many loud noises, too many deployments. They put their families through hell for a pittance and the love of their country. They maintained the knowledge required to keep the military running effectively, even when higher paying civilian jobs were available to them. They stayed under the impression that they would be compensated over time.
Yes, there has been a rift between civilians and military. That is due to an all volunteer force and the desire of many Americans to save the day all over the world, regardless of what it does to those who go. If you disagree with those policies, fine. Change them in the future. You don’t get to look back and say, “Well, gee, I guess that was a bad idea, so now I’m not going to pay those who did the work.”
The ones making bank are the contractors who sell ancient equipment like it’s high speed stuff. My smartphone does a lot more and costs 1/100th of the cost of some of our equipment.
But you stay focused on those pensions so you can save a couple dollars off the backs of soldiers/marines/sailors/airmen.
“Many of these men have permanent disabilities caused by too many jumps, too many loud noises, too many deployments. They put their families through hell for a pittance and the love of their country.”
Yep. The ones who have actual disabilities (not the “wink-wink” disabilities assigned at the retirement physical that are endemic fraud in the military) get priority, hopefully they’ll even get help after we reconstitute an economy after we fall off the cliff.
“But you stay focused on those pensions so you can save a couple dollars off the backs of soldiers/marines/sailors/airmen.”
We can’t afford to pay a pension to an able-bodied person. We probably can’t pay any government pension, including military ones in the long term - given that we refuse to even discuss the issue.
Like I said - repeatedly by the way, I wish we had a vibrant private sector that could afford to pay all these folks the money they think they were promised.
As it stands we don’t, and we can’t.
It’s math. You can pretend I’m advocating stealing canes from old vets, but I’m not. I’m pointing out the obvious math problem. Promises made by government backed by future revenue that will not be realized are the problem. Deal with the reality.