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economical to outsource. That $95 buck a month E-1 eventually turns into an E-6, 7, 9 or 9, does twenty or thirty years, and collects a check on the first of the month until death do they part. World War II vets who 'stayed the course' are making far, far more in retirement (and health care benefits via Tricare For Life) than they EVER did while they were on active duty. For example, a USN E-1 made less than $2K a year during WW2. The kid who stayed in, did a full career, retired as an E-9 after 30 years is getting about a grand more than his WW2 annual pay each and every MONTH. And if he dies, and has elected SGLI, his widow gets a pension until her death. Privatizing allows for surge capacity, and when the 'event' mandating the surge goes away, the costs also go away, and don't come back to haunt one downstream, month after month, year after year. Personnel costs are the biggest chunk of the defense budget. It's why in the Reagan era, they tried to skint on those costs with that crappy REDUX program to reduce retirement costs--it went over like a lead balloon, and they got rid of it eventually.
There is one way to do it without privatization, but it is a political hot potato--the draft. No one is willing to touch that third rail, at least not yet. You draft 'em in, and boot 'em out when you are done with them.
With proper management (emphasis on the word PROPER) it is far cheaper over the long haul to outsource. Your upfront costs are greater, but you aren't having to pay, and pay, and pay over the course of a full career plus a long retirement, with annual COLA increases every year.
The other issues you raise, with regard to the portability of job training for infantry personnel are social issues--I grant you, they are not insignificant ones. However, I was speaking to the economics of the matter, and a military full of potato peelers and rock painters is just not economically viable. This force restructuring has been going on for some time, also--it is not the Monkey's idea. We did it in Bosnia, big time. Also, there are some jobs that do still transport well to the civilian sector--aviators do well, as do military medical personnel and those who work aircraft and other equipment maintenance, as well as anyone working computer systems, drone technology, logistics, communications and so forth.
And there is also a little unfortunate, not often discussed truth with the folks who are toting that weapon and shooting folk in time of conflict--the Services in actual fact don't want most of them to do a full 20 or 30 year career. What they want is a small percentage of them---the best and brightest--to stay on, and lead and train the younger ones--and these young ones are the ones that they want to cycle through for one or two enlistments, and then out and off to school with their GI Bill (assuming they make it out alive). They also intended to use the Guard and Reserves as 'surge' forces, but things have gotten so bad that no one is willing to be conned into that "two weekends a month/two weeks a year BS, because they turn on their TVs and see what the truth of it all is. "Surge" has turned into a full-time job, with no end in sight.
Because infantry type work is a young person's game, the attrition is built into the job, anticipated, even, because the work is so damn onerous, and if we ever get a peace dividend, they use what are termed "force shaping tools" to cull these kids, who are finally catching a break, out. These force shapers can be anything from harder advancement tests (up or out/high year tenure), strict enforcement of physical readiness standards, and Congressionally mandated end-strength reductions, elimination of specialties, requiring kids to transition to another MOS/NEC (and get crappy evals and get marginalized because they don't know the job--they did this with radiomen years back, got rid of a ton of them that way) along with BRAC and installation consolidation as well as intermediate commands being regionalized to reduce the number of paper pushers and administrators.
All that said, I am certainly not blind to the fact that recruiting is flagging, the only way the groundpounding Services are making goal is to first, reduce the goal, and second, reduce the quality of the intakes. But the reason for that has everything to do with the prosecution of this so-called 'war'--it was a bad idea, and it is not going well thanks to an insurgency that they should have anticipated had they half a brain between the lot of them. And even the Cat IV recruits can see that, and that is causing a lot of kids to forgo an 'opportunity to excel' (which is what we always called an incredibly shitty task). Had our forces been used appopriately (to provide for the DEFENSE of the nation, not engage in wars for oil and get revenge for 'tryin' to kill mah deddy') the outsourcing of support functions can, if carefully monitored and competitively bid, save the taxpayers a small fortune. If the cause is just, and makes sense, you don't have trouble getting patriots to step up to the plate to do that tough work, either.
It's not the fault of the tooth-to-tail reduction concept that the Monkey and his crew are a bunch of thieves with their paws up to their elbows in the public treasury. It isn't working because they are deliberately, cheerfully, and aggressively ripping off the taxpayers and failing to provide any oversight or accountability. The fox is watching the henhouse. If we had a few farmers with guns watching the henhouse instead, we wouldn't have this problem. But that's one-party rule for ya--they are going to keep stealing us blind for as long as they can get away with it.
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