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 .
Fucking spectacular
Thats actually hilarious. Good on you.
Shell or bail.
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.
In the military you are 4 times more likely to die from suicide than you are from being killed in combat.
The greatest threat to US military personnel is the US military.
Suicide also kills more Americans than murder within the USA
The difference is we don’t try to recruit teenagers for murder. Well, the government doesn’t anyways, at least on paper.
35k is also shit pay.
I read it as a 35k signing bonus.
Or the “Ram 1500/Dodge Challenger bonus”
You mean the 25% APR mustang special
That’s the military discount only at “Support Our Troops” dealership.
Coming soon to a base “lemon lot” near you,
2022 Mustang 22k miles, driven hard, 1 owner, no oil changes 28000 obo
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.
Is that because they lowered the standards for intelligence and fitness so that anyone can join now?
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
Maybe the sign spinner is a veteran too.
You clearly have never experienced the dark underbelly of the sign spinning subculture.
only 35k to dodge bullets in some far off corner of the world away from your loved ones?
and they’re surprised no one is taking that offer?
That’s $35K, plus free room and board. If you have no loved ones, it’s actually a pretty decent option.
You also need a lack of conscience to invade other countries and kill their citizens and bomb their hospitals though
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.
Depends on how much you value your life and independence.
Life? Not at all. Independence? What’s that?
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But would you have to live in New Jersey?
Dealbreaker
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.
healthcare is covered for life
As a foreigner I wonder why we see so many veterans with untreated psychiatric problems in movies or on the news.
Few reasons:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The 35k I’m assuming is a sign on bonus
it’s not, that is your annual salary
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.
Based on what information do you assert this as fact?
it’s barely more than what they offered me when i was in high school and i told them to fuck off? military service does not pay all that well
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.
It’s not really a rate it’s a bonus. It doesn’t say annually, it says 35k… and… a job.
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.
How long to come back with that much?
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.
Kinda sounds like a good time ngl
Weird kink but you do you
When I beat my meat I fantasize about being a red coat oppressing colonial Americans in the 1770s
Wow, what’s the job?
Shooting poor people to protect oil interests for multi-billion conglomerates.
Does it say anything about the kind of people you feel are up to the job that you’re approaching a grown man wearing a chicken suit?
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.
Wait… Wait, they’re anti military because as sign spinners they were regularly approached to join the military?
A ton of Americans would take the job if it only involved shooting. Thing is though, it’ll also involve being shot at.
I wish I was so simple I’d think like you.
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.
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No arguments, only baseless ad hominem fallacies.
You indeed have the intelligence to be in the military.
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.
I see what you’re saying, but 9/11 resulted in the largest enlistment surge ever.
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.
Recruiters chase misery like sharks chase blood.
I mean, accurate but Jesus Christ that’s brutal haha.
And he gets paid more to wear that costume than the military one.
The scars on my mate’s back from lugging their frequently hazardous nonsense around would support this.
Duck costumes also don’t render you unable to have sons as every kid he and his former unit members have seems to prove.
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.
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Seriously. I joined as a Nuke in 2000. $72,000 enlistment bonus. One year later the bonus shot up to over $200,000 once 9/11 happened.
- My nuke bonus offer was 10k with “up to 100k upon reenlistment at the end of an initial 8 year enlistment” I ended up with AECF anyway.
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.
I’m gonna chalk that up to propaganda. Most of the people supporting the war weren’t being paid by the military.
Nukes dont doo much murdering, they mostly just sit next to the spicy thermos and wait for their shift to end.
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.
I kinda want to be your best friend now.
You’re being downvoted, but why else do people sign up to kill other people and be shot at voluntarily?
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.
What if we - and bear with me here - built a society where you didn’t have to kill people to go to college?
Sounds great.
But until then don’t blame 18yo kids with no other prospects for taking the path that will keep them from being homeless.
Not 100% true.
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.
The majority of service members are not infantry. You’re far more likely to be a desk jockey or a support role than see combat.
I struggle to see the difference.
Idk maybe try talking with someone about it without being an asshole and maybe you’d see the other side and it wouldn’t spiral into an unruly argument
What’s the other side?
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.
Because they’re poor and joining gives them a way to feed and shelter themselves and their family.
Imagine living in a world where you have to kill other people before society thinks you’re valuable enough to feed and shelter your family.
I mean. There are a lot of places like that including ones where it’s mandatory. So, what was your point again?
Not to mention the fact that not everyone who serves actually kills people, but I imagine that distinction is lost on you.
Not everyone can take the truth
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.
Coast Guard is offering $65k for anyone who wants to cook.
It’s honestly a pretty miserable job, but you’re not getting shot at, sooooo…
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.
Yep.
I heard about a surgeon he worked at a military base. Sure he would see gun wounds etc
But never actually be in combat himself
I used to game with a former Coastie, he said roughly the same thing.
Same GI Bill, same pension system, and you get to actually do shit most of the time you’re in.
(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.
Service industry for an especially entitled clientele? Fuck off. That’s not nearly enough money.
I worked for a coast guard contractor many many years ago. It also wasnt a great job but was kinda nice knowing that I might help save lives someday.
How hot is that in the rest of the world?
306 kelvin
555.67 Rankine
Its the same amount of hot in the rest of the world, just measured in different ways.
Here’s how you convert between the two:
T[°C] = (T[°F] - 32)* 5/9
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.
That edit lol I used to know this by heart at some point in my life. Now I’m fine knowing that it exists and use software to do it for me instead
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.
Ah, yes. Subjectivity.
Pretty much no one uses F°
as opposed to the measurable freezing and boiling temperature of water?
At sealevel.
Since everyone lives near sea level, that can be safely omitted.
Yes all 8 billion people on earth live at exactly sealevel at all times.
They do, approximately. Did you miss the basic science class in which it’s made obvious that the crust of the Earth is thin as fuck?
You have never cooked a meal in Denver Colorado ;)
100 is unacceptably hot. Nobody can live in that for long.
86f peak temperature with 35% humidity? Tolerable. Especially when the sun goes down and the temp drops but the humidity stays lower than like 55%.
But the next day of 95f peak temp followed by 76f nadir with 70% humidity overnight? People without A/C die. The homeless die.
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.
You should have linked a physiology reference.
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.
Of course you don’t die instantly. The guy above talked about temperatures like that over a longer period, i. E. A whole day.
People can survive 100C+ saunas for 15+ minutes. But 40C and 100% humidity will kill you after a couple hours.
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.
Small world views. Places have hotter temps than that and more rural communities and do fine.
Not doubting your comment, but it is just localised to wherever you sourced that.
Temperature isn’t everything. Humidity (as awful as a measurement it is) matters significantly more.
At least humidity makes sense. 0% is dry, 100% is " the air is full"
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
Man, I’m shocked that most people would rather wear a duck costume in sweltering heat than risk taking a bullet or a grenade!
Of course people dont want to go to the trenches with a rifle and helmet, they would get mud all over their duck costume
Am I the only dad (other than OP) traumatized enough to get the “Got any Grapes” reference?
Wadddle waddle and he waddeld awaaayyy
only dad
Broski the song was a popular flash animation on albino-blacksheep like 20+ years ago, so nah.
The kids who grew up with it are dads now
I blame Wade.
I blame Roe
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?”
The bird returns, “I’ve no need.”
any money quantity isn’t enough when we are talking about the possibility of being killed or maimed somewhere around the globe
Hey, now. That isn’t completely accurate. You can also get PTSD!
you can also get captured and spend several years as a pow
I’m more into it because of the killing of innocent civilian children TBH /s
The jig is up, US Military…we know what you are now
"Tanks’ place is in museums,
Let them quietly rot there."
Also fuck Putin.
Welp, looks like it’s back to lying to vulnerable children
