Yes but you won’t get to enjoy the improved infrastructure, because you will have already left the country…
We don’t need more soldiers, the service can be many worthy endeavors, not only military. Infrastructure improvement sounds good. Kids should not get to choose, because one of the benefits is that it encourages different groups to mix. Everyone blames social media for how divided things are today, but it’s not going anywhere.
i mean military service is an amazing deal for the government. you make people to work a lot for low pay with the added risk of death. you just need to turn the machine into more productive endeavors. i mean ultimately i wants once best for me. if thats in the us then i stay in the us. they say when the going gets rough, the tough get going. to someplace nicer!
I’m in favor of mandatory public service, not necessarily the military though.
The U.S. military has approximately 2 million troops, active duty and reserves. National Guards are plentiful in addition to that. But the U.S. population has approximately 16 million 18-20 year olds. Some of those will have legit health exemptions, some will get out of it because daddy has a lot of money. Let’s say we end up with 10 million mandatory 2-year public servants.
Some will bolster the military, sure. That’s not just doing push-ups in the desert anymore. There are 19 and 20 year old kids sitting in offices dropping missiles down terrorists’ chimneys from remote-controlled aircraft. Plus the Space Force is ramping up and will need some tech-savvy young blood.
California could use some firefighters. State and national parks are hurting for park rangers. Highschool graduates could go straight into trade programs and then go get on-the-job training on the innumerable federal and state building projects.
This would give disadvantaged highschoolers a chance to see all the opportunities available to them and give children of the not quite elite a dose of the real world. Win-win IMO. The kids who fall in between those extremes wouldn’t be particularly hindered in their later years. I mean seriously, how productive were your first two years out of school? Not so much that being 24 instead of 22 would seriously impact your later life. (S2K is exempt from that last comment)
Maybe another Great Depression would trigger this?
Eighty-five years ago, on April 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order allocating US$10 million for “Emergency Conservation Work.” This step launched one of the New Deal’s signature relief programs: the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC. Its mission was to put unemployed Americans to work improving the nation’s natural resources, especially forests and public parks.
Today, when Americans talk about “big government,” the connotation is almost always negative. But as I show in my history of the Corps, this agency infused money into the economy at a time when it was urgently needed, and its work had lasting value.
Corps workers planted trees, built dams and preserved historic battlefields. They left trail networks and lodges in state and national parks that are still widely used today. The CCC taught useful skills to thousands of unemployed young men, and inspired later generations to get outside and help conserve America’s public lands.
Also
At work sites, the Agriculture and Interior departments – custodians of U.S. public lands – were in charge. CCC members planted 3 billion trees, earning the nickname “Roosevelt’s tree army.” This work revitalized U.S. national forests and created shelter belts across the Great Plains to reduce the risk of dust storms. The corps also surveyed and treated forests to control insect pests and created forest fire prevention systems. Over its decade of operation, 42 enrollees and five supervisors died fighting forest fires.
