With the country’s immense debt and deficits, budget talks have made their way to the military’s notoriously generous benefits packages. Although no changes have been made, or even officially proposed, the notion of cutting military benefits and packages has prompted a vociferous response.
Typically, those who join the military retire at age 38 after 20 years of work and get a monthly pension of half their salary for the rest of their life. This way for approximately a century, it is increasingly being criticized as unaffordable, unfair to some who serve and overly generous compared with civilian benefits.
The unaffordable status quo provoked the Pentagon to order a study, conducted by the Defense Business Board on how to mitigate rising costs. The board members are from big businesses — experts, the Pentagon says, in executive management, corporate governance, audit and finance, human resources, economics, technology and health care. One of the recommendations was that pensions be scrapped and replaced with a 401(k)-type defined contribution plan.
The notion of inducing high rates of military enrollment through economic benefits without parallel in the private and civilian sectors might also implicitly give undue approval for war, giving Washington’s demand for troops ready fulfillment in any war of choice or aggression.
Still, the real cost the Pentagon incurs upon itself and the nation is the cost of running a global empire and numerous unnecessary quagmires. That they would look to cut pay to their obedient infantry first, and to their militarism last, sheds light on their priorities.
It has always been thus, except perhaps for a grateful nation after WW II. What do you think Shay's Rebellion was really all about, or the bonus marchers at the start of the Great Depression?
If the Pentagon actually does cut military pensions, they're going to be pissing off a lot of people who carry guns….not smart.
Not to mention a probable drastic drop in recruitment numbers. Might even precipitate revisiting the DRAFT. Got to feed the war machine…
Need to correct a few of the author's distortions:
1. Typically, those who join the military (regardless of age) leave before 20 years and receive nothing. Only ~17% of those who join stick it out for 20+ years.
2. While retirees used to receive 50% of their final base pay as their pension, the formula has been adjusted over the years and is now slightly less than that.
3. The pension is a ratio of base pay only. Allowances for housing and food, and any incentive or specialty pay, are excluded. So the actual payout is closer to 25-30% of what someone actually made..Not very much, given the difficulty of starting a new career at age ~40 and the fact that retirees no longer receive free medical care on base. (The former, of course, does not apply to senior officers, who easily migrate to the civilian side of the military-industrial complex and haul in several times what they did in uniform.)
All that said, this article verifies the old saying about the two categories of military benefits: 1) those that have been taken away, and 2) those that are under attack. Back in the early '80s during my USAF tenure, an outside commission recommended that, among other things, all commissaries be shut down. When the head of the commission was informed that such a move would cause recruiting & retention to collapse, he retorted, "Well then, just bring back the draft."