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
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.
It wasn’t all that bad, most of the really horrible crimes were committed by the CIA. Army Grunts were there to clean up afterwards. I think a lot of the infrastructure developments and border security policies in the Middle East actually truly helped alleviate the radical wahhabi islamic militant groups that were created when the USA toppled democracy in the region during and after WWII.
As a vet, believe me you welcome the fucking bullets. I would rather be deployed than be in garrison. You have no idea how insufferable the bureaucratic bullshit in the military is. Im not downplaying the war part, but your mileage will vary with exposure to life threatening situations depending on where you get placed. You may land in an assignment that places you directly in harms way on a constant basis, you might never end up in a combat situation at all, or anything in-between. It’s all luck of the draw, you don’t pick your duty station. However the one constant thing you will find wherever you go is the most asinine frustrating circuitous bullshit that you have to deal with on a daily basis. The hoops you need to jump through for the most basic shit. The dumb old fucks that outrank you getting anal retentive about regulations that they’ve clearly never read. The ridiculous amount of busy work. So much bullshit. There were plenty of times when I was in that I WISHED someone would fucking shoot me.
This is exactly why I do not believe the US military to be as mighty as it claims: there is no autonomy, and- as the Millenial Challenge games showed- it relies too much on technology and order.
… You think the US military is weak because it relies on technology, and how it fared in a simulated war against itself?
Are you forgetting stuff like how we’ve actually seen it go to war? Or how we’ve all become so used to how it fights that when Russia invaded Ukraine, we were all startled that it didn’t unfold like the typical US invasions do?
The US military has 1.4M active-duty personnel. With a turnover rate around 20% per 36 months, that’s about 2.9M cumulative service members from 2001-2021. During that same time period, US forces suffered about 7000 casualties. That’s a fatality rate of 0.24%, which is not that much higher than that of a civilian living in Detroit in the 90s.
It’s probably the signing bonus, base pay for an E-1 is much lower. Going off 2023 rates the first year base pay comes out to $22,432.80 plus BAH/S, specialty pay etc. might bring it up to $30k ish. Even if they are coming in as an E-4 base pay will be $30,042.
There are absolutely jobs that have a 35k sign on bonus. Or did at least. The way the OP is worded would be strange for it to be base pay. Sounds like a bonus to me. But you can think what you want.
Not to shill for the US military, but, uh… source on NJ paying anything comparable?
I don’t know if you’ve looked for a job in the US lately, but the prospects for a 19 year old with just a diploma, and not pursuing a college degree or a skilled trade, are pretty dismal.
You’re looking at something ~$30k for a Starbucks barista or a McDonald’s burger flipper, or maybe ~$36k if there’s an automotive plant nearby. Both are hourly, so gotta hope they actually give you decent hours if you go the fast food route. If you go the autoworker route, hope you enjoy 8+ hours of repetitive, non-stop, physical labor. You’re then spending at least a third of your ~$20k - $25k take home on rent and another third on food.
Compare that to $36k, with no significant costs for room and board. You’re paying federal taxes but the deductions for active military are huge and most states waive income tax for soldiers. Your take home is better, your expenses are less, your fit, healthy, and your healthcare is covered for life, and if you leave after your contract is up you get to enjoy the government paying for college.
Like 99% percent of military personnel never see combat, and especially now that we’re done with Afghanistan and Iraq it’s even safer.
The military’s problem is that anyone smart enough to do that math and weigh those choices is probably smart enough to do something else, but for millions of people it’s a better choice than slaving away at McDick’s as cost of living and college tuition continues to rise.
The system is far from perfect. It’s not as good as say, the NHS or Canada’s health system. And while it’s “free” healthcare that is better than the non-existent free healthcare that doesn’t exist for other Americans, it’s underfunded and understaffed, especially following 20 years of war which obviously saw a huge strain put on the VA system.
It’s only healthcare. Veterans with untreated psychiatric problems also often struggle with homelessness and stable employment. If they’re transient, it can be difficult to insure they, say, make a key appointment to get a diagnosis or prescription.
Many people who are largely on their own with psychological issues, including but not limited to veterans, simply do not stick with a treatment regimen. There aren’t a lot of mechanisms in place to force someone to take a prescribed drug, even if it helps, and don’t like how it makes them feel. This obviously can feed back into #2.
Selection bias. It seems like “so many” because our military is huge. 1.9 million US troops were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 20 years. Of those let’s say 5% saw actual combat (hard to say how many, but all estimates I have seen say certainly not more than 10%), which is 95,000. If most of those end up with PTSD, that’s more soldiers than most of the coalition forces sent over, combined. If around half do (and around 35,000 US troops were injured, so this tracks), that’s more than France’s entire contribution to the invasion and occupation. The vast majority of the remaining 1.8 million who went over and weren’t in combat are typically fine. Sure, some will also have psychological issues, but these are people who might have anyway even if they weren’t in the military.
Lol not even close, it’s 35k for someone just entering the service. If you get deployed to a conflict zone you’re coming back home with 60-80k, but there’s no conflicts right now so without hazard pay you’d still come back with over 50k cash for traveling through Okinawa or fucking Germany with your housing and food payed for. So for the right personality a career in the military is extremely lucrative, but it’s not for everybody.
I think that’s a signing bonus. As in “we’ll give you $35k to take this job that also pays a salary”.
I tried to look up equivalent total compensation for a new recruit would be, but it looks like it’s nontrivial to figure out. It’s something like $25k/year, and full dental, medical, housing, food, and retirement and it’s all tax exempt.
Not a bad deal for almost no prerequisites to joining, other than the “selling your freedom” and “directly contributing to violence” parts.
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 $75,000 from what I’ve heard, but I’ve been out since 2004
Do we think conscription will be brought back if they continue not being able to find people desperate enough to join? I think it’s disgusting recruiters are allowed near and in public schools.
No. We don’t want conscripted soldiers. We have proven that a volunteer military will stomp a conscripted military into the dirt. See Wagner VS US in Syria ç 2017-2018
The militaries argument is that a peer-to-peer conflict with say China would result in millions of casualties within months that would have to be replenished. You can’t replenish those with volunteers.
Still, it’s highly highly unlikely that will ever happen.
Yeah, I’m not saying they absolutely wouldn’t ever use the draft again, I’m saying that is the weapon of last resort. Professional soldiers just do the job better than conscripts.
In such a scenario, yeah we may have to institute the draft again, but as you said, I find an all out war unlikely.
The US military has more than enough people signing up willingly. The only way conscription would ever possibly get restarted is if the US was in a conflict where hundreds of thousands of soldiers were being lost. I honestly don’t even think it would be necessary then either, because the US is a giant war cult, so people would be lining up left and right to “serve their country.”
Perception can diverge from reality. Russians were expected line up for conscription. Biggest line I know is accountants’ line who want to sell their male workers(and female doctors) for 300 000₽(3k$) 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.
Recruiters chase misery like sharks chase blood. That costume is probably more comfortable than the shit the army makes you wear and he can tell his boss to fuck off if he gets sick of it.
If I had to join a service (and I’m just plain too old at this point, anyway), it’d probably be the Coast Guard. Their primary mission is saving lives. One issue is that they’re also an arm in the War on Drugs, and that’s where shooting might actually come into play. Other issue is how they handle refugees. That said, you can still feel better about their work than the regular military.
Many, if not most “regular military” jobs in Western armed forces don’t involve front line combat and getting shot at or shooting at people. Less than 10%.
Now obviously, you look at Ukraine and think “Well that’s a lot bigger than 10%,” and it probably is. But any country with a large air force, navy, and sizeable ground forces are gonna have thousands of people trained to load weapons onto planes, manage ship engines, cook, drive supply trucks, load cargo planes, cook, manage payroll, manage procurement of equipment, fly drones, cook, run propaganda and recruitment, operate medical facilities… the list goes on.
I had an ex whose brother was going to med school to be a surgeon for the Navy. Her father, who was an Army pilot, thought it was great because he knew his son was just gonna be (relatively) safe on a carrier or hospital ship somewhere, not getting shot at, and just saving lives.
Yeah, I joined for the GI Bill (and steady work, as I was 26 and working at a cable television call center), and ended up staying in because the job I was doing was preferable to what I had wanted to get a degree to do. I went into aviation, though (helicopter flight mechanic and avionics electrical technician). It’s been an awesome job and I get to retire in 6 years and get a paycheck for the rest of my life! And my kids get my GI Bill, so between the two of them they have 4 years of college paid (while also getting an allowance for housing).
I’ve never had to shoot at anybody or get shot at and have been in operational jobs my whole career. I’ve never been put in a situation where I had to do something morally questionable.
That said, if I went for a non-aviation rate I’d probably have done 4 and out, and get my degree. The other rates seem either boring or miserable (to me). Then again, the vast majority of civilians jobs feel the same way to me, so YMMV.
(and I’m just plain too old at this point, anyway)
Not sure how old you are, but the max age for active duty enlistment was raised to 42. Which, as a person who went through boot camp at 26/27 and just turned 40, is nuts.
Man, come on. The ONLY time imperial makes some decent sense is temperature: for humans, 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot.
Edit: for anyone metric having a cow here, I am pro-metric. All I’m trying to say is that of all the hairbrained measurements in imperial, temperature is the least hairbrained.
What? Tropical regions regularly get that hot, are we supposed to believe that humans die off during the day and get replaced in the night?
I live in Maricopa county, and while yes people do die from the heat, it’s not really a substantial amount (about 400 out of over 4 million). It’s almost always the elderly or people with severe health problems.
The guy is way off with humidity levels. But look up wet-bulb temperature. Over 35C on the wet bulb scale which you egt with 40C and 70% humidity will kill you.
Do you know what temperature a hot tub is? That’s with nearly full body immersion, 40 C with 70 percent humidity is easily survivable.
Of course any outside temperature above 37 has a possibility of killing you, but those are the extreme outliers. If the claims being made here were accurate, humans wouldn’t exist, we would never have survived a tropical summer.
Again, no. As long as you can replenish water and electrolytes, you’re not going to die. It doesn’t take a few hours to kill someone by heat. If you are actually unable to regulate your body temperature, your core temperature will increase much faster than “taking a whole day”. It’s the loss of water and electrolytes that inihibits your metabolism and cooling that makes you die, not the heat taking several hours to permeate through your skin. (Human metabolism generates a lot of heat, so this idea is even more absurd if you think about it).
Read a physiology textbook, or even basic evolutionary biology if a human couldn’t survive 40C with humidity, humans would be extinct.
It seems like you talk about sweating - thats why you talk about the replenish water and ectrolytes part. I hope you know how sweating works and that it only works if the humidity is not too high.
So what do you think happens if the air temperature is over your body temperature and sweating dies not cool you down?
Maybe you should read a book. I am really curious about a biology text book that will tell me that 40C and 100% humidity is totally fine for humans for survive, lol.
Literally so ignorant. Sweating is not the only way to lose heat. How much heat does the body generate?
The fact that people may die from a certain temperature, does not mean they will die which is what every person here is claiming. Again read a physiology textbook, humans aren’t that fragile.
your right. there is no true ‘objective’ scale for temperature. freezing/boiling water is arbitrary and not even that consistent. for 99% of use, farenheit is better for people. the biggest advantage that celsius has, is that it is the same scale as kelvin, but thats just because it was more popular in science. the rest of metric is good tho
32°F is 0°C which is why you need the 32 in there. For the fraction I always just try to think about whether Celsius or Fahrenheit is bigger. Accordingly, I’ll need a number smaller or larger than one.
edit:
Aight I got the fraction wrong, which kinda proves that it’s useless to remember lmao.
The easy way to remember the multiplier is that there’s exactly 180 degrees between boiling and freezing in Fahrenheit, and 100 in Celsius. Just use 1.8 instead of a fraction.
In Fahrenheit, 0 is the temperature of ice in some random brine, just as 0 in Celsius is the temp of ice water.
Fahrenheit and Celsius are defined nearly identically. Fahrenheit just chose some weird values for its basic constants, like using a weird ice brine instead of just ice water.
So a bird saunters up to a citrus refreshment booth, and he communicates to the booth attendant, saying “hello (bom bom bom) do you happen to possess any grapes?”
The attendant returned “no, we only deal in the business of citrus refreshments, although the drinks are cool and crisp, and they were prepared in my household! Could I interest you in a serving?”
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