He’s already got a job, and you aren’t going to get PTSD from spinning a sign. On top of that, you can quit any time you want if you want to do something else.
Still a shit signing bonus. That must literally be the lowest signing bonus possible today. Pretty sure that my job (Navy Nuke) is still offering a sign up bonus of $200,000+
Lol. Basically the entire air force hasn’t offered an enlistment bonus for the past 15 years because they’re so overmanned. The army just stopped offering reenlistment bonuses for the first time in god knows how long because even they’re so overmanned.
Retainment has never been the issue. 90% of jobs in the military are basically office jobs to support the 10% who would actually see combat. And if you are part of that 90% you have a pretty cush life. Monthly tax free pay for food and housing, free health and dental, potential to live in Japan, England, Spain, Germany, Belgium, or pretty much anywhere else, 30 days of paid time off a year, gi bill for free college, the thousands of benefits vets get after they separate, a pension for life after 20 years for those who stay in, it’s not hard to see why people stay once they’re in. Where they are having a problem is that initial hurdle, getting people actually in the door. Which makes sense, a lot of young people, especially nowadays, are pretty anti establishment; there’s also an obesity, drug, and mental health epidemic that disqualifies people from service, and there is always that looming threat that you could be sent out to die.
To answer your question, no, no meaningful standards have changed to allow more people in, besides allowing marijuana usage. Which was basically already allowed; you just needed to pinky swear to your recruiter you had never done it. If anything it’s been made more difficult with new requirements for previous medical history.
Ultimately I’m glad I joined, the benefits far outweighed the negatives. It lifted me out of poverty to a job where I’m making 6 figures and got to see the world. Only you yourself can decide if joining is worth it.
You won’t get PTSD from spinning a sign, but most of the sign spinners I’ve known have been homeless, and you will get PTSD from being homeless. The cops alone cause all cities and towns to be hostile to your very existance
The 35k reads to me like an enlistment bonus not a base wage. You can google base wages for the US military if your actually interested. That said if we’re talking the US military there isn’t a chance in hell that it’s a 40 hour work week. He’d be lucky for a 60 hour work week and 80 is pretty standard if your leadership sucks. I had a cot in my office I used multiple nights a week when working for a particularly dickish commander once.
There are plenty of terrible things about the military, stupid long hours, highly toxic work environment, alcohol abuse is encouraged, rape culture is accepted, etc. But the pay isn’t all that bad when you add everything up (base pay, tax breaks, housing allowance, on post child care discounts, uniform allowance, free health care, dependants, re-enlistment bonuses, etc). The per hour rate isn’t good but I’ve also never gotten the equivalent time off in PTO that I got in leave either.
There also isn’t a wage gap for minorities, there’s a ton of other bigotry, but no wage gap.
Yeah the entry base pays not great but you do have to keep in mind that there are fewer federal taxes taken for some forms of pay from the military. At lower ranks you also get a barracks room free so you aren’t paying rent (or utilities) and you can eat in the mess hall 3 times a day so technically you don’t need to buy food. There is also a clothing allowance in addition to your base pay so clothing doesn’t come out. You also aren’t paying premiums for medical, vision, or dental either.
Once housing, clothing, utilities, insurance, and food are covered that $23k a year isn’t as bad as it looks.
To be fair, for at least the first couple years, your cost-of-living expenses are also essentially zero if you’re single, since you’ll be staying in the barracks and eating in the mess hall without having to pay anything out of pocket. So that $35k stretches a lot further than it would outside the military.
You also don’t have much time to spend it because they keep you pretty busy. In addition there are tons of other perqs. Looking back I’m disappointed I didn’t join. You get retirement very early, and you can start other jobs that you wouldn’t have the opportunity for otherwise.
I didn’t want to get yelled at. That was what kept me out. Now that I get what that was about I think I could have done it for the required six weeks.
I mean, the USN is currently offering enlistment bonuses between $50k and $75k for anyone going down the nuke pipeline. The lie is probably that the $35k is for one specific rate he’ll never qualify for.
People who work with naval nuclear reactors, so the supercarriers and the submarine force. The US Navy is the largest US-based nuclear power plant operator, by reactor count
That would be the lowest possible bonus these days. My sign on bonus was $72,000 in 2000 and the next year it jumped to $275,000 for my job in the Navy. It’s come back down to $75,000 from what I’ve heard, but I’ve been out since 2004
My brother joined up and deeply regretted it. I was 8 at the time. When I got to the age where recruiters started sniffing around I told one that I would join if I could only shoot the people Exxon wanted me wanted to shoot, I didn’t want to fight for any other oil company. He called me unamerican and they never came back .
Oo. Time for my “terrible recruiter” story. This was back in the 90s, so the issues then were not the issues now.
My teacher (genuinely cool guy, but a veteran) brought in an army recruiter to talk to us. He ended literally every clause with “'n stuff.” Like this:
“If you want to join the army 'n stuff, you gotta get real fit 'n stuff. You gotta get going with a good exercise program 'n stuff. But we’ll get your fitness to a new level 'n stuff, plus pay for college 'n stuff.”
Basically, it made me decide that I wasn’t stupid enough to sign up.
I’m pretty certain that I made an entire recruitment office hate each other for a day. Walked into the Navy office and they had me take a “mini-asvab” Literally 5 minutes later, I called out “I think I’m done!” they replied “no you aren’t.” One of them came in and looked at my screen and said, “Um… Guys… He’s done.” They told me to go talk to the other branches first to make sure that I didn’t really want to be “Air Force, or something,” and finally got my signup bonus, since I knew I wanted to be Navy Nuke. I wanted a good paying rate.
When I got sent to MEPS I was told that I was the highest testing applicant from that particular MEPS station since WWII. I probably should have taken that as a warning sign.
Ha. Same test thing happened to my dad in the UK when he was called up for selective service. Handled the easy test in 5 minutes, but he was told he had to wait until everyone was done. He said the questions were like: Which is the odd one out- square, circle, triangle, elephant. And he said an hour later, there were still people trying to finish in confused frustration.
My dad got out of service entirely. He would never tell me how.
My dad got out by selling weed (allegedly). They couldn’t absolutely pin it on him, so he got a general discharge. (Years later he told me that he used to sell acid to a two-star general.)
Given that they have changed testing multiple times since WW2 this is almost certainly false. Additionally a perfect ASVAB score isn’t that rare, so your station probably recorded one before you.
Maybe they lied to me, I dunno. Lord knows that recruiters are well known liars. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have a 99 since WWII, since that testing station is small and surrounded by hicks.
Everybody is a liar. Have a casual conversation with someone, then thoroughly research every claim they make and you’re pretty much guaranteed to run into a falsehood.
Dude I must have made way too good of a score on the ASVAB test in high school because the Army recruiters hassled me for years afterwards with calls and letters. I was never tempted to sign up though, and glad I didn’t because we started the whole War on Terror a few years later. Several of my friends went to war and came back very different, all of them with PTSD and some with physical problems too.
A few of the guys I game with were sign spinners at some point, and they’re all extremely anti military for that reason. One of them is technically homeless and has spent a few years without a roof, and wouldn’t join the military if his life depended on it.
You wish you were so simple THAT you’d think like me.
Let me tell you something simple: If an opportunity is a good one, for employment in this example, all that has to happen is for it to be known that it exists and people will come knocking, asking to be allowed to avail of that opportunity.
If someone comes to you and tries to sell you about how something is a good deal for you, they are the one who has something to gain, and it is going to be at your expense.
It is well known the chinese took ME oilfields as a part of their imperialistic tendencies.
US military ensures the flow and protection of global trade which facilitates everything you take for granted. Saying US armed forces protect only big oil interests and are a burden on the world is quite literally a lie and honestly reminds me of elementary school bros who unironically believe so.
Do we think conscription will be brought back if they continue not being able to find people desperate enough to join? I think it’s disgusting recruiters are allowed near and in public schools.
No. We don’t want conscripted soldiers. We have proven that a volunteer military will stomp a conscripted military into the dirt. See Wagner VS US in Syria ç 2017-2018
The militaries argument is that a peer-to-peer conflict with say China would result in millions of casualties within months that would have to be replenished. You can’t replenish those with volunteers.
Still, it’s highly highly unlikely that will ever happen.
Yeah, I’m not saying they absolutely wouldn’t ever use the draft again, I’m saying that is the weapon of last resort. Professional soldiers just do the job better than conscripts.
In such a scenario, yeah we may have to institute the draft again, but as you said, I find an all out war unlikely.
The US military has more than enough people signing up willingly. The only way conscription would ever possibly get restarted is if the US was in a conflict where hundreds of thousands of soldiers were being lost. I honestly don’t even think it would be necessary then either, because the US is a giant war cult, so people would be lining up left and right to “serve their country.”
Perception can diverge from reality. Russians were expected line up for conscription. Biggest line I know is accountants’ line who want to sell their male workers(and female doctors) for 300 000₽(3k$) in bulk.
Base pay for an E1 is $23,011.2 per year. Granted you don’t have to pay for food or shelter as an E1. But. Well. Let’s not pretend it’s actually $35k a year.
I imagine the money was the reason most of you were eager to murder as many brown ppl as you possibly could. It also possibly explains why most sane individuals who should have opposed the war supported it, once the dollar is involved common sense is gone.
Because of you want a job that’s not flipping burgers or a trade, you either need to have money for college or need to join the military to pay for college later.
The reality is, most jobs that require a degree shouldn’t. I have a degree and have a great job, but what I do isn’t at all related to what I studied in college.
I never finished college and have a pretty nice IT job now.
Admittedly I had a lot of shit jobs before by some luck one of those places I worked at for a couple years had an IT opening. I applied and had somewhat of a reputation for helping out the less technically savvy peeps on my line, went to the interview, answered their questions and got my foot in the door for experience.
It wasn’t a great paying position but eventually I was able to move elsewhere and a couple jobs later I found myself making decent money, better money than some I know that do have college degrees.
People who have served mainly and in person if you can.
Pretty hard to verify identities of people on message boards and forums so you could be talking to 1 guy with 20 accounts and 1 direction they want to take things.
We’re vulnerable people to mass opinion, and on the internet mass is easily manipulated.
I joined the SSBN fleet to have my finger on the toggle switch when the order comes to launch thermonuclear missiles. I spend my days when on patrol in a tin can at the bottom of the sea, not shooting anyone. But if we’re gonna end human life, I want to be there to watch the world burn and make way for some species less destructive.
An enlistment bonus generally isn’t included in your yearly income for the purposes of recruitment until they know for sure what rate/mos you’ll be. Until then it’s not something a recruiter can offer unless that enlistment bonus is available to all enlistees. And it’d still only be for the single year. They aren’t giving you $75K every year of your 4-6 year first enlistment.
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