UPDATE: I have decided to cut Brooks some slack. The more I read her initial blog posts, the more I think readers must view her writing as a research-project-in-work. Brooks is beginning her posts with a research question and a thesis statement of sorts that will no doubt be revised and fine-tuned in the coming months. She is very open to comments/emails/critiques and I am confident her research sources and analysis will continue to improve.
Original Post:
Rosa
Brooks' Welfare State: Meet America's Socialist Military annoyed me to no end
because her analysis was so arbitrary and meandering. Reading her follow up blog posts and her lack of research rigor (she uses USA Today as a source), I have to wonder whether we are getting punked by Foreign Policy?? If, however, FP's aim was to drive readership and begin a dialogue on military spending--WELL DONE.
Her basic thesis was (from
what I could tell) that,
"These days, the same
could be said of the American military. Is the military different
from the rest of us? Yes -- it has more money."
And while she stated she was only
looking for the facts, she obviously skewed those facts to favor her
hypothesis. There were two commenters that most aptly captured the main
issues with her article.
Here's googooyou's (an unfortunate
screen name that should not distract from his insight) great comments :
1. CBO caveats comparing military to
federal civilian compensation and rightly so. The biggest glaring example
is that military are salaried whereas civilians are hourly.
Let's punch the time clock to see what soldiers actually are paid on an
hourly basis and then see where compensation falls. Interesting that the
CBO report cited did not include postal, legislative, and judicial
employees and excluded warrant officers from the military.
2. CBO in this report also analyzed
enlisted soldiers versus federal civilians with high school diploma.
Given that today's enlisted personnel by the time they are NCOs will have
a college degree, let's then make an accurate comparison of their pay for years
in service and college degree versus federal civilian with college degree,
and let's see how much less they actually make in comparison.
3. CBO's officer comparison is also
off, since most officers will have a master's degree, so let's actually compare
salaries of federal employees with master's degrees versus straight bachelor's.
Also, considering my small scope on things, having had many
GS14-GS15's work for me who have half the time in service and less education
than me, making more than me sure seems to go against what CBO is reporting
here. Not to mention my comrades in State and other Agencies who make more than
me with less time in service.
4. CBO reports are biased, not
because CBO is necessarily biased, because CBO only goes off the
parameters requested by the asking party. In this case, it was from Dem
Whip. At least CBO dedicates an entire page to explaining reasons why comparison is
difficult, although it makes some stupid assessments about intangible benefits
like solidarity offsetting real costs of things like moving your family every
1-3 years.
5. Let's get a real estimate of what
soldiers' compensation should be by just looking at what the government is
willing, rather has to pay, security personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc as
well as what the government has to pay federal civilians in those areas, then
compare against military pay. Let's start with security personnel making
$160-$200 per day versus E-5 and below pay/compensation. For equivalent
college educated personnel at State and other Federal Agencies with the 75%
plus compensation and other amenities on top of regular pay, versus junior office with
equivalent college education.
6. Just because there are noncash benefits
does not mean that all soldiers are able to use them. Given housing costs
in various areas, it is cost prohibitive to go to the commissary. I also
disagree with the cost comparison of the commissaries since I don't know where
they get the figures since it seems where I shop on the economy is cheaper than
the commissary, even if going to one wasn't cost prohibitive. Plus, the
commissary is famous for saying that you don't pay tax, but there is a
surcharge, not to mention the baggage fees. Same applies for recreation
centers etc. Medical care is a whole different animal considering, as
anon12 said so well, it isn't so much a benefit as it is a requirement for
readiness. Given that it takes so many appointments to get anything done
in the military health system these days, the costs seem to be more
administrative bureaucratic ones rather than quality health care. That
cost should not be spread across as some compensation to military personnel.
I'd really like to see how CBO or other people actually calculate noncash benefits,
because this is where the real fluff goes when trying to compare.
The English major in me loved Morgan
Rock's comments:
I think the author needs
to have a talk with her husband. It seems she has a misunderstanding of
the term "dangerous job". I don't really understand how anyone
with the slightest bit of understanding about the way the military works could
write this article. It seems like the kind of thing I would have seen
over a decade ago in my high school AP english class... as an
example of how not to write well-reasoned, coherent analysis pieces. The
title barely makes any sense in context with the article, and there doesn't
seem to be one actual argument or theme to the whole thing.
Here's what I saw in the article (not all
inclusive):
- The military gets too much money
- The military gets much more money than
the State Department
- The military's benefits are unjustly
higher than those in other civilian professions
- Civilians don't understand the military
- Civilians reflexively revere the
military, with reverence approaching that of religion
- The military is being asked to do too
much
- The military is overworked and deployed
too much, too often
Which of these statements are the
primary point of the article? How does she reconcile the contradictory
ideas? Why should civilians NOT revere the military? How SHOULD the
military be compensated (or should civilians get the same
"unsustainable" social programs)? Good lord, this article is a
mess.
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