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especially veterans, feel this way, of course. But many do. There are actually any number of free market, individualistic conservative government employees who have never worked in the private sector. If you ask them about the government spending that benefits them, such as thrift savings matching contributions, pensions or health care, they will say "But I earned it!" People who are paid entirely from tax receipts and public debt attacking both.
For some, I think there's a strange sort of projection. In the military, you get a uniform allowance, a housing allowance or on base housing, health care for your entire family, pension benefits unavailable elsewhere, and even such things as government golf courses and vacation spots. Your chaplain and doctor are both government employees, and you shop at AAFES and do your banking at some federal credit union. Your training is provided at taxpayer expense, and you may even get some educational benefits under the GI bill. If you have to move, the government pays for that, too. Even the cost of your frequent haircuts is subsidized. You retire early (and who else gets to do that?) and roll your military pension into some pension as a civilian employee. Then you retire and get Social Security, your military pension, your government pension and your thrift savings. Your kids are born at a government hospital, and when you die, your family may be eligible for a variety of benefits from the National Cemetery Administration, to include a government headstone or even a burial allowance.
I think some of these guys look at their base pay and say "What the heck? If I had not gone into the service, I could have earned a six-figure salary!" They forget that, when they joined, they were an 18-22 year old kid with no job, no education and no way to pay for an education, that their only useful skills have been acquired while in the service of the government, and that, absent their careers in the military, they would have spent their lives working at some dead-end job for 20-40k a year without the pension, health care or other benefits. In other words, it's the most comprehensive socialist system of benefits in the world.
It is an act of radical ingratitude for people who collect monthly checks from the government to rail against the size and scope of government.
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