In Trump’s orbit, some muse about mandatory military service
wapo.st
Only 1 percent of the U.S. population serves in the military. Some in Donald Trump’s camp say it’s time more young adults put “some skin in the game.”

Some in the former president’s camp say it’s time more young adults put “some skin in the game.”

JD Vance appears to be in on requiring the kids of non-billionaires to serve in the military too:

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a potential Trump running mate, said in an interview that he sees a clear need for measures to boost participation. “I like the idea of national service. And I’m not talking about in wartime,” he said, calling for more Americans to put “some skin in the game.”

  • Tower@lemm.ee
    6·
    18 days ago

    expanding the military by 100x

    Send massive amounts of money to defense contractors…

    entirely cut all post-separation benefits for anyone that is conscripted

    without any future liability obligations…

    you could expect to see that number triple, easily

    and leaving tons of room to grift…

    cutting everything else that taxes are spent on

    all while also getting to fuck over the poors?

    Somewhere, a senator just spontaneously jizzed his pants.

    • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
      1·
      18 days ago

      all while also getting to fuck over the poors?

      Not just the poors though. You’d have to cut infrastructure spending, Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare, criminal justice, food and drug administration (you know, the people that make sure food is safe?), everything that makes our country more or less functional. This isn’t something that the 1% would be fine with; it’s more like the .1%, or .01%, because even most of the very wealthy people would end up getting badly fucked by the kind of cuts you would need to have in order to add that many people to the military without instituting oppressive taxes.

      I think that saying that the current military budget would triple if there was mandatory conscription is actually being incredibly conservative. If you look at military spending as a percentage of GDP when the US last had something even in the same county as mandatory conscription–World War II–the US was spending over 40% of the GDP on the military.

      I can’t imagine most people in the US being okay with that kind of loss of necessary gov’t function combined with insanely high taxes unless the US was also involved in an existential war.