Our Lefty Military

[darrels joy]

Our Lefty Military
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: June 15, 2011





As we search for paths out of America’s economic crisis, many suggest business as a paradigm for cutting costs. According to my back-of-the-envelope math, top C.E.O.’s earn as much as $1 a second around the clock, partly by cutting medical benefits for employees. So they must be paragons of efficiency, right?




Actually, I’m not so sure. The business sector is dazzlingly productive, but it also periodically blows up our financial system. Yet if we seek another model, one that emphasizes universal health care and educational opportunity, one that seeks to curb income inequality, we don’t have to turn to Sweden. Rather, look to the United States military.

You see, when our armed forces are not firing missiles, they live by an astonishingly liberal ethos — and it works. The military helped lead the way in racial desegregation, and even today it does more to provide equal opportunity to working-class families — especially to blacks — than just about any social program. It has been an escalator of social mobility in American society because it invests in soldiers and gives them skills and opportunities.

The United States armed forces knit together whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics from diverse backgrounds, invests in their education and training, provides them with excellent health care and child care. And it does all this with minimal income gaps: A senior general earns about 10 times what a private makes, while, by my calculation, C.E.O.’s at major companies earn about 300 times as much as those cleaning their offices.

That’s right: the military ethos can sound pretty lefty.

“It’s the purest application of socialism there is,” Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general and former supreme allied commander of NATO forces in Europe, told me. And he was only partly joking.

“It’s a really fair system, and a lot of thought has been put into it, and people respond to it really well,” he added. The country can learn from that sense of mission, he said, from that emphasis on long-term strategic thinking.

The military is innately hierarchical, yet it nurtures a camaraderie in part because the military looks after its employees. This is a rare enclave of single-payer universal health care, and it continues with a veterans’ health care system that has much lower costs than the American system as a whole.

Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the American military isn’t its aircraft carriers, stunning as they are. Rather, it’s the military day care system for working parents.

While one of America’s greatest failings is underinvestment in early childhood education (which seems to be one of the best ways to break cycles of poverty from replicating), the military manages to provide superb child care. The cost depends on family income and starts at $44 per week.

“I absolutely think it’s a model,” said Linda K. Smith, executive director of the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, which advocates for better child care in America. Ms. Smith, who used to oversee the military day care system before she retired from the Defense Department, said that the military sees child care as a strategic necessity to maintain military readiness and to retain highly trained officers.

One of the things I admire most about the military is the way it invests in educating and training its people. Its universities — the military academies — are excellent, and it has R.O.T.C. programs at other campuses around the country. Many soldiers get medical training, law degrees, or Ph.D.’s while in service, sometimes at the country’s finest universities.

Then there are the Army War College, the Naval War College and the Air War College, giving top officers a mid-career intellectual and leadership boost before resuming their careers. It’s common to hear bromides about investing in human capital, but the military actually shows that it believes that.

Partly as a result, it manages to retain first-rate officers who could earn far higher salaries in the private sector. And while the ethic of business is often “Gimme,” the military inculcates an ideal of public service that runs deep. In Afghanistan, for example, soldiers sometimes dig into their own pockets to help provide supplies for local schools.

Granted, it may seem odd to seek a model of compassion in an organization whose mission involves killing people. It’s also true that the military remains often unwelcoming to gays and lesbians and is conflicted about women as well. And, of course, the opportunities for working-class Americans are mingled with danger.

But as we as a country grope for new directions in a difficult economic environment, the tendency has been to move toward a corporatist model that sees investments in people as woolly-minded sentimentalism or as unaffordable luxuries. That’s not the only model out there.

So as the United States armed forces try to pull Iraqi and Afghan societies into the 21st century, maybe they could do the same for America’s.

Hoo-ah!


A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 16, 2011, on page A35 of the New York edition with the headline: Our Lefty Military.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/op...rssnyt&emc=rss

[reconeil]

Kristof's: "So as the United States armed forces try to pull Iraqi and Afghan societies into the 21st century, maybe they could do the same for America's" is flat-out-wrong or obvious; "Lefty" BULL. Only French Foreign Legion is more politically dictated than America's military.

Besides, SOLELY Socialist/Marxist nations can be ruled dictatorially like The U.S. Military.
Our Representative Republic with Constitutional Freedoms (non-existent in military),
just cannot be so-damn-DICTATORIALLY RULED. Well,...at least if Obama gets kicked out?

Neil

[Arrow]

Harvard College Graduate Julia Pollak with a degree in economics now serving in the United States Navy as an enlisted Aviation Structural Mechanic answers Nicholas Kristof’s Perversion of the United States Military Model...

Link to:

http://bigpeace.com/juliapollak/2011/06/17/nicholas-kristofs-perversion-of-the-u-s-military-model/

[darrels joy]

I would sooner be a part of the real U.S. military than of Kristof’s Harvardian anti-military any day. The entitlements crisis in America today is largely caused by a perverse liberal impulse to extend military-style benefits to all, but without the military’s standards, and to extend military-style control over parts of the economy where it would be hopelessly inappropriate, while simultaneously undermining the military’s core functions.

Excellent! and a good discussion of a very important topic.

Joy

[reconeil]

Besides Dem/Progressive/Leftist/Marxist/Communist/Socialist posing as a liberal Kristof's obviously prefering America as a whole be ruled like the U.S. Military being absurd-as-all-hell,...one important reality & key fact is missing.

"America's Finest" receive no Socialistically FREE (actually U.S. Taxpayer Paid For) entitlements. Possible charges for so-called Freebies could actually prove Quite High.

All volunteers sign on the dotted line to possibly GIVE LIFE & LIMB if need be to protect America & We Fellow Americans.

Whereas others On The Dole, both on Welfare & in Government (Presidents inclusive), make no such commitment to sacrifice life & limb for God, Country & Constitution, whatsoever.

Hell,...many HONORABLE(?) in government wouldn't even sacrifice their cafeteria priviledge nor parking space for country. Wonder what HONORABLE(?) Kristof & like would sacrifice for America? Some worn out shoes or such?

Neil

[launcherman]

Kristof's point is that a socialist society can work and is working, as the US military. Kind of. But obviously this cannot work for a society as a whole. The freedoms that the military protects does allow for slackers to be slackers. However, where the military puts up their lives for their benefits, others do not have to risk anything to receive the benifits of America. Ok, the military puts in to get out, should people in the US have to put something in to get something out? Civic duties?

[reconeil]

Most Americans typically: "Put something in to get something out", already.

If worker & employer don't pay-in (50/50) to F.I.C.A. for A LIFETIME,...no monthly Social Security payment is received at retirement. Social Security IS NOT an entitlement.

If elderly at 65 don't apply for & pay monthly premiums for MEDICARE (ever increasing), none will be received. MEDICARE is not an entitlement,...whereas freebie MEDICAID for those on Welfare most certainly is.

If both renters & home owners don't monthly pay their portions of property taxes as required, neither are guaranteed sleeping indoors. Solely those On The Dole or On Welfare are guaranteed such by The U.S. Taxpayer. That's an entitlement.

Thus, I see absolutely nothing wrong with requiring: "Civic duties" for any able-bodied American Citizens on Welfare Roll. Wouldn't that be fair?

To help defray any travel expenses back home,: "Criminally Illegal Aliens" should do some-sort-of civic duties around their respective embassies.

Neil