There are other ways to do national service.
Pick up litter and paint over graffiti are two for that can be done by anyone.
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Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
Pick up litter and paint over graffiti are two for that can be done by anyone.
- Teacher/teaching assistant at K-8 levels (e.g. Teach for America)
- Park ranger/ forest service/ rural wildfire fighter
- Law enforcement assistant (fed, state, local, tribal)
- Fire/EMS/911 dispatcher
- Nurse/health care/hospital admin
- Government civil agency administration
- Courtroom administration
- Government-led industrial projects (e.g. TVA, AmeriCorps, Army Corps of Engineers, BLM, shipbuilding jobs, DoD and EPA polluted site cleanup)
- DHS/FEMA/TSA
- Peace Corps
It could also be part of an accelerated pathway to citizenship for Green Card holders.
Crap. Just read the link. Now I really am upset. If I am channeling Hendrix it is only a matter of time before I am run off AW. What then? WWHD?Wink, are you Jerry Hendrix IRL?
The Navy We Need | National Review
How to respond to China’s challenge at sea.www.nationalreview.com
(In fairness, Jerry Hendrix, CAPT (USN Ret), Phd has pushed so many varying, and often contrary, ideas over the years that I'd be more surprised to find something he hasn't advocated.)
Not quite, more than just a handful of folks have disabilities that prevent them from doing either along with many other physical activities.
I like the idea of national service but there are a myriad of reasons from the simple to the political that prevent it from being implemented in this country today. What I do have a problem with is the 'Starship Troopers'-like idea that citizenship requires national service. It didn't work out so well for the Spartans in the end and it conflicts with the some of the core ideas that this nation was founded on.
As you pointed out there are plenty of options that exist already for folks who want to serve this country, and those who do are often afforded benefits not available to others and are defensible because they are limited to a small segment of the population. But a requirement for national service and making benefits contingent on that service is problematic on many levels, from legal to fiscal, and could even run into problems passing constitutional muster when the benefits from national service would be available to many but not all.
ABMD
Bullets don't fly without Supply
I can see something like the current College admission cheating scandal coming out of this. Wealthy/elites will somehow find a way to get their children out of serving whether they pay-off a Dr to say their children are incapable of service (mental health, physically unable to work or what have you) or they will just pay-off someone else to look the other way.
I agree with public service for some other benefit, say like free tuition (public university) for 2 years (or more) of civil service.
By virtue of our service in the military, we're afforded benefits that not all citizens get, GI Bill and on and on. While I'm never a fan of 'free college for all', if we made benefits above and beyond what the everyday citizen receives contingent on additional service of some sort and codified those into a simple collection of benefits (have you ever looked at the wickets for Federal Student Loan forgiveness?!?) it might provide an incentive to service and dare I say some sort of common purpose or goal for all citizens which we seem to drift away from more all the time.
As to those who are unable to serve in any capacity, I'm of the opinion that we should be helping them out in multiple ways already. If they're starting from a physical or cognitive disadvantage it's my moral (not political) belief that assisting those less fortunate is our duty as humans.
Pie in the sky, folks will take advantage of it, etc. Yeah, I know.
@ABMD
Totally agree that it's an imperfect system. But if the benefits are discounted student loans, or lower home mortgage rates, then the juice really isn't worth the squeeze for wealthy - they can skip this national service (it can be 100% voluntary, like our military) and just pay out of pocket. But even if it's 100% voluntary, it could be a life-changing stepping stone for low income families to get a solid start in life toward paying for college after HS, or getting out of student loan debt after college, or getting training other than fast food/retail.
I would want to cap the service length at 2x2 years max, because we don't want this to become just another jobs program where civil servants can homestead for years simply to draw a steady paycheck. The people in service would receive performance evaluations - let's not get into Eval/FITREPs and Reporting Senior's Averages, but something that is tangible and is based on merit. At a minimum, a secure, digital way to ensure they showed up for work. The wages in their service would be higher than minimum wage, and comparable to what we currently pay for entry level forest service, teachers, etc. Nothing so lucrative that nepotism would be a major concern. No one's gonna be a GS-13 in this thing.
Also, if these young adults spend a couple years doing service in a government-sponsored service effort, they might begin to see that bureaucracy exists and government isn't the automatic answer to all of the world's problems.... -sorry, did my libertarian leaning views slip out there?
Totally agree that it's an imperfect system. But if the benefits are discounted student loans, or lower home mortgage rates, then the juice really isn't worth the squeeze for wealthy - they can skip this national service (it can be 100% voluntary, like our military) and just pay out of pocket. But even if it's 100% voluntary, it could be a life-changing stepping stone for low income families to get a solid start in life toward paying for college after HS, or getting out of student loan debt after college, or getting training other than fast food/retail.
I would want to cap the service length at 2x2 years max, because we don't want this to become just another jobs program where civil servants can homestead for years simply to draw a steady paycheck. The people in service would receive performance evaluations - let's not get into Eval/FITREPs and Reporting Senior's Averages, but something that is tangible and is based on merit. At a minimum, a secure, digital way to ensure they showed up for work. The wages in their service would be higher than minimum wage, and comparable to what we currently pay for entry level forest service, teachers, etc. Nothing so lucrative that nepotism would be a major concern. No one's gonna be a GS-13 in this thing.
Also, if these young adults spend a couple years doing service in a government-sponsored service effort, they might begin to see that bureaucracy exists and government isn't the automatic answer to all of the world's problems.... -sorry, did my libertarian leaning views slip out there?
In the mental masturbation that is this subject, I hadn't thought of this. That right there may have enough value to be worth it!
A bit, but I agree with you there. I think the average American (or average group of Americans) tends to expect far too much from their government because they have been promised far too much, for too long. It would be nice to:
a.) Spread more awareness of the realistic limitations of government and why such limitations are healthy.
2.) Encourage people to invest in their local communities- the trend away from that has led people to replace community with social media and political affiliations, and forget that you can actually be friends with someone who has different views than you.
In that sense, some kind of compulsory, non-punitive, community service could be helpful if it was implemented intelligently. However, because of point (a), it probably wouldn't be, so for that reason, I'm not for mandatory public service in America. The odds are too high that our government would get it wrong, and doing it wrong would make things way, way worse.
D
Deleted member 67144 scul
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Put bluntly, the government is more concerned with self-sabotage and high school level antics/drama and getting things wrong, than it is with getting things right. Then they scratch their heads wondering why things they do go so wrong domestically and abroad due to incompetence coupled with short-sighted, selfish, or sinister motives. It's terribly tragic because we could do so much better.
As absurdly expensive as college is these days, "free college for all" isn't free as anyone knows. It's funded by taxes (which would skyrocket if such a policy were to be implemented), and the system will most certainly be abused both by schools and students. Closer to "home", it would defeat one of the top motivations for going through ROTC or one of the service academies: free college. The question isn't if officer recruitment would take a hit, but rather by how much. As we are the most militaristic nation in the world, I can imagine such considerations mean a lot more than it does for, say, Portugal.
US is the most militaristic? Really?
While free* college is certainly a part of why people choose to pursue military service as an officer I don't think it's the driving factor.
*Shoved up your ass a nickle at a time
I disagree. "Government" isn't "run" by politicians or the worker drones, it's run by the myriad of General Schedule employees who try to do their job, independent of political parties. Sure, they get hampered by policy, but they also know how to work "through" the problem. The people scratching their heads are the policy makers, not the executors. Unfortunately the end-user gets to interface with the worker drones, so no one feels like they're coming out ahead.
This what seems to get glossed over in the "debates."
In France, they have a tiered system for post-high school options. One tier is through the university system, and another is a pretty robust apprenticeship program in the trades - anything from agriculture to construction to cheesemaking, etc. Not everyone needs or wants a college education... and the world needs ditch-diggers too. The concept of free college for all is a massive overshoot of actual demand.
Agree, but I think to be truly successful, it cannot be compulsory.