This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Defense cuts

  • To Support Our Patriots–Privatize the Military

    It occurred to me in the last blog I put together, “Why So Few Choose to Serve,” that the government has a distinct advantage over American patriots, and because we have a Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps talking about why marines should be paid less. The reason for this is that the US government, and ultimately most world governments, have what is called a monopsony. A monopsony is where there is only one buyer in the market. American patriots want to serve their country–or in this situation, sell their labor. However, there is only one buyer of that labor, putting the Patriot at a distinct disadvantage. What is one simple way to reduce the problems caused by this? Bring more buyers into the market by privatizing the military.

    Do I completely believe in privatization of the military? No, but for the sake of healthy debate, I’m going to argue that it is to the benefit of the American patriot to privatize the military because it will allow them to be properly compensated for their service.

    I am going to start out with some very simple assumptions:

    1. The government is the only purchaser of a patriot’s labor.
    2. The only motivation for patriots to supply their labor is to serve their country. No other form of compensation, initially, affects their decision to serve.
    3. The wage provided by the government is unrelated to services provided or productivity of the patriot.

    I have also chosen for the simplicity of this conversation to ignore the following:

    1. The efficiency benefits of a privatized military.
    2. The potential evils of allowing greed driven decisions to be attached to military power.

    With these assumptions in place, we can look at the ways that the government takes advantage of the patriot. The first being wage. Wage is the collection of all financial benefits paid: paycheck, insurance, and retirement benefits.  The Government, employing laborers who are only motivated by patriotism, can set the wage wherever they desire, which is why pay is considered to be so low. In a situation like this, the only factor driving the decision for what to pay a patriot would be a minimum livable wage. There are also pay raises to account for changes in family structure, but not because of a caring for the patriots’ families. It’s merely because, without these pay increases the patriots would no longer be able to supply their labor.  If the military wanted you to have a family, they would have issued you one, hopefully in better condition than the gear I have already been issued.

    The additional wage requirements for patriots with families,, and the cost of more mature patriots, is one of the many reasons that recruitment targets the younger patriots with the glitz and glamour of the job, not the wage, as in other civilian fields of employment. Young people join for the experience and the opportunities, not the financial return, or as it applied to me at seventeen years old, I wanted to blow shit up.

    Now, with these wages intentionally kept low, this is a method of controlling enlistment numbers for more senior individuals–those with the additional responsibilities that a person gains while they get older and are no longer able to remain within the military because the cost to maintain their household requirements no longer matches with the pay and benefits they receive from the military. This leaves only those who are willing to sacrifice pay to continue to provide service to their country.

    I was told by my Battalion Commander, “The Marine Corps gives you everything money can’t buy.” Fellow service members have also looked down upon me when I pointed out that one of the driving factors to remain within the military is my educational benefits.  The culture of the military pushes out those mercenary thoughts, while promoting patriotic service for its own sake.

    Why would a privatized military support the patriot? By providing the patriot, who is willing to supply their labor, regardless of wage, additional options as for whom to provide their labor. For example, Company A and Company B have both been contracted out to perform military operations to support America. The missions being equal, and the pay being the only difference, the patriot will have the option to choose the higher paying company.

    Is this mentality mercenary, yes, but it is a means of compensating our patriots with more than a slap on the ass and a thank you for your service.

    Now, the final question remains: Why do patriots deserve a higher pay? In the civilian market, a person is paid based upon the services they provide. A factory line worker is paid an hourly wage based upon their value to the company. If only ten widgets are created an hour by that worker, then their impact is ten widgets per hour. If a musician puts on a concert for twenty thousand people, their impact is the entertainment of twenty thousand people.

    The patriot provides security, either through defensive or offensive operations, to three hundred and seventeen million people, producing a collective GDP of $16.8 trillion against violent threats. That responsibility is spread among the 2.3 million patriots who have decided to serve. That is the impact of the patriot’s service.

    The American patriot is going to provide their service regardless of their pay, but with such a high level of impact, why not compensate them in a similar manner as we do so many others? By allowing the patriot the option to provide their patriotic service to the highest paying organization, we recognize their impact upon our nation.

  • You Get What You Pay For

    The effects of Defense wide cuts is far reaching. As this US News Article discusses.

    “We’re an 11-carrier Navy in a 15-carrier world.” Army General Martin Dempsey said.

    According to Marine General John Kelly, his command is, “unable to get after 74 percent of suspected maritime drug smuggling.”

    Our budgets are being cut so tight that we are unable to accomplish the ever increasing global missions that we are being tasked to accomplish. This is an ultimate consequence of the success of our military and the generations that came before. They have established a sense of security within our borders that fosters the idea that we no longer need the military. That is a nice idea, and 9/11 should have been a reminder of that, but as a nation we have a short term memory.

    There will come a point when we as a nation are again reminded that the world is not a friendly place and we can’t solve problems by throwing money at them. Well, throwing money at other people, while failing to invest in ourselves, our infrastructure and our ability to defend it. The issues in Crimea are highlighting the failure of that thought process, and I hope that we won’t have to solve that problem with physical intervention. Stalin, however, does seem to be trying the west/America’s patience, just to see what he can get away with.

    At the rate we are going, however, with more budget cuts, we won’t have much left to fight with. Our military will be poorly equipped, understaffed and under trained. Hopefully, our enemies will just be happy that we keep developing new iPhones and still make great movies, and just leave us to our own devices.

     

  • Don’t Like Contractor Labor? Well, How Much Would Using Federal Civilians Cost?

    Yesterday, I wrote an article showing fairly clearly that military labor ain’t exactly cheap these days.  It was kinda fun kicking the anthill – so to speak.  (smile)

    However, someone asked an obvious follow-up question:  rather than contractors, what would doing the same job with government civilian labor cost?  So yeah – I took a shot at that one, too.

    I used the same assumed location (Fort Bragg, NC, area); the same activity (2 shift warehouse operations) applies.  But now I’ll use the following grade structure (all GS employees – I don’t want to wade through Wage Grade regulations and policies to figure out what WG-level and pay rate is apropos).

    • Warehouse Manager:  GS-12, total:  1
    • Warehouse Foreman:  GS-11, total:  1
    • Shift Lead:  GS-9, total:  2
    • Team Lead:  GS-7, total:  6
    • Warehouse Workers:  GS-5, total:  36

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  • So, How Much Money Would Using Military Labor Really Save?

    I got asked a question the other day that intrigued me.  And as longtime readers probably guessed – I decided to play with some numbers and see where they led.

    The particular question was in the context of a military logistics contract.  The question was, in effect, “How much money would DoD save by doing that with military labor”?

    Obviously, I don’t have the specifics of that contract. But I decided to make a couple of assumptions, then “run the numbers” for a contrived but IMO reasonably representative example to see where the numbers led.

    As that example, I chose a warehouse operation – two shifts, with 3 nominal 7-person teams (team lead plus 6 workers each) and a shift lead for each shift, plus a warehouse supervisor and his/her deputy.  (Let’s call the teams on each shift “receiving”, “warehousing”, and “shipping”.)  I then assumed military and civilian staffing and compared costs.

    Since costs vary by region and the logistical contract in question was in the “South”, I assumed the location was in the vicinity of Fort Bragg, NC.

    The military staffing for the operation I assumed was as follows:

    • OIC:  1 ea O-2, 3 yrs TIS
    • NCOIC:  1 ea E-7, 14 yrs TIS
    • Shift Supervisors:  2 ea E-6, 9 yrs TIS
    • Team Leaders:  6 ea E-5, 5 yrs TIS
    • Team Members:  18 ea E-4 (3 yrs TIS), 18 ea E-3 (2 yrs TIS)

    I further assumed the OIC, NCOIC, Shift Supervisors, and Team Leaders were all married; that the Team Members were 50/50 split married/single; and that all lived “on the economy” (e.g., received housing allowance and separate rations).  This was necessary because – unlike civilian industry – military personnel costs vary depending on whether or not an individual is married.

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  • Yet Another Broken Promise. Gee Thanks, HQDA.

    I wrote this article mainly because I’m p!ssed, and I’m venting.  It’s geared toward Army personnel and retirees who read TAH.

    But personnel with a background from other services might want to read it anyway.  I’m guessing similar things will be happening in other services, albeit likely involving other subjects.

    AKO – Army Knowledge Online – will close its doors to retirees and dependents at the end of March 2014.  That’s now official Army policy.  See page 6 of this document.

    Inactive retiree/dependent accounts (no password change in the last 90 days) get the axe at the end of the year.  Current accounts (those who’ve had a password change within the past 90 days) will get the axe on 31 March 2014.  Further details are in the linked article.

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  • If You’re Still Wondering Why Your Taxes Are So Ridiculiously High . . .

    . . . this article might explain it:

    Census Bureau: Means-Tested Gov’t Benefit Recipients Outnumber Full-Time Year-Round Workers

    Here’s the summary:  in 2011, 108,592,000 persons in America were receiving some kind of means-tested benefit from Federal, state, or local governments.  That same year, only 101,716,000 people worked full-time year round.

    Unfortunately, that’s only part of the “good news”.  The total of nearly 108.6 million above does not include persons receiving non-means-tested government benefits – e.g., benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, non-means-tested VA benefits*, or unemployment compensation.  Again according to the Census Bureau, the total number of persons receiving Social Security, Medicare, non-means-tested VA benefits, and unemployment compensation in 2011 was 104,617,000.

    There’s obviously some overlap between these categories.  There’s overlap as well as with means-tested government benefits.  Still – this is well past ridiculous, and fast approaching obscene.

    So, the next time you wonder why you pay all those damned taxes, just remember:  there are now more people drawing means-tested government benefits in America than are working full-time.  There are also more people drawing non-means-tested government benefits than are working full-time.  That just might have something to do with why the government seizes so much of your earnings.

    And it also might explain why we can’t seem to come up with enough dollars to defend the nation adequately, too.

     

    *Note:  most VA benefits are not means-tested.  However a few VA benefits – such as VA pensions for low-income vets and the VA Aid and Assistance allowance, to name two – are means-tested. 

  • Tell Us Something We Didn’t Already Know, General

    The headline says it all, but the article is fairly short and worth reading:

    Current funding makes hollow force ‘inevitable,’ 3-star says

    No surprise, really.  Some of us are old enough to remember post-Vietnam and the Carter years.

    Looks like it’s gonna be, in the words of Yogi Berra, “Déjà vu all over again.”

  • DoD Finds Some Spare Change

    Well, it looks like DoD found some spare change under all those dayroom and lounge sofa cushions.  According to published reports, DoD civilian employees will now only be furloughed for a total of 6 days this fiscal year vice the previously-announced 11.

    Kudos to the SECDEF for making this happen.  I don’t agree with some of his policies, but here IMO he did the right thing.  His predecessor left him this mess, and to his credit he seems to have managed to minimize the damage.

    Further:  given the complex nature of the DoD budget and changing conditions worldwide, even managing to find this miniscule percentage of the overall DoD budget used here was no small feat.  The $1.5 billion DoD managed to “find” and reprioritize – only $1 billion of which went to salaries – represents less than 0.3% of DoD’s base budget.

    I will make two observations, however.  First, the lack of planning by the previous DoD leadership contributed greatly to this mess.  DoD leadership actively refused to plan for the possibility of sequestration because they thought it “would never happen” – and publicly said so.

    Seems to me I’ve heard a quote that’s pertinent about that type of conduct:  “When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

    Second:  that lack of planning severely hurt some folks, particularly lower-graded DoD civilian employees.  Had appropriate planning been done starting in January, the furlough could have likely been spread over a much longer period (say, 6 months at 1 day per month) vice being imposed as 1 day per week.  No change in net dollar savings – but losing 5% of income for 6 months is generally easier to handle than losing 20% of income for a month and a half.

    Still:  give credit where credit is due.  Kudos, Mr. Secretary.

    Now, could we ask you to talk to some of your 3- and 4-star generals about combat and its actual physical requirements – and about the necessity to have and use a spine sometimes?