By ALLEN R. SANDERSON
a few weeks of class, any Economics 101 student should be able to
demonstrate that the lowest cost way to provide a military force is our
current “volunteer” or free-market army, a system we have employed since
Why? Because only those whose opportunity cost is at
or below the established market wage rate, plus those who are extremely
patriotic, will enlist. By contrast, drafting LeBron James may appear
cheaper on the Pentagon’s budget by paying him a draftee’s salary, but
that entails—to him and to the economy—an implicit tax of several
million dollars a year (that is, what he would have earned, and would
now be forgoing, as a member of the NBA Miami Heat).
addition, a volunteer force is more likely to have higher morale as well
as lower turnover and training costs because these recruits want to be
involved in defending the nation rather than serving grudgingly because
they were taken away from family, friends and other preferred options
But that unassailable logic fails to take into account other important
factors. First, there may be some inherent value in public service for
an individual and for society. On the “plus” side of that ledger one has
examples of low-paid, or unpaid, “internships”—serving in the Peace
Corps, coaching a youth soccer team, or being a Mormon missionary.
Second, high schools, and even colleges, occasionally require a modicum
of “volunteer” activity or service to graduate. And oftentimes a felon’s
sentence may include incarceration, financial restitution and specified
hours of community service. Thus there is implicitly a notion of
equity, shared sacrifice, or the larger community’s stake in providing
those opportunities, instituting requirements, and meting out
punishments, not just how we can accomplish a given chore in the
Our Conscription History
From colonial times to the Civil war, able-bodied males were required
to enroll in the militia. The Enrollment Act in the early 1860s, our
first national conscription, provided for a military draft, though
northern soldiers could furnish (and compensate) a substitute to avoid
serving themselves. The Selective Service Act of 1917, on the eve of our
entry into World War I, provided for conscription.
Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 represented the first
peacetime conscription in U.S. history. Young men ages 21-36 were liable
for military duty via a lottery system, though men up to age 65 also
had to register. Protests over the Vietnam War led President Nixon to
abolish the draft and move to an all-volunteer military force in 1973.
Over the last several decades there has been a worldwide trend away from
conscription and “universal military training”. More recent U.S.
military campaigns—Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Iraq and Afghanistan
in this century— have been conducted entirely with free-market
That Pesky 47%
2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney was surreptitiously recorded
remarking that 47 percent of the population wouldn’t vote for him
because they didn’t pay taxes and were welfare recipients.
Leaving aside his slight math deficiencies and tone-deaf manner, he was
not exactly wrong. If am not wealthy myself, then taxing more heavily
those who are holds a certain appeal for me. The same is more or less
true when it comes to the well-heeled’s annoyance at having to pay for
food stamps and other public welfare programs they are unlikely to use:
Trim that Medicaid budget!
What does this have to do with
national defense? Plenty. Nowadays fewer and fewer of us, including
U.S. presidents, have military backgrounds and wartime perspectives to
draw upon. And our troops come disproportionately from lower-income,
less-educated, and minority households in the South and West.
If I have no intention of joining the army myself, nor in our
increasingly self-isolating, diverging society am I likely to know
anyone who did, I might be more inclined to favor invading another
country and sacrificing American lives. I would pay a very small
personal price for my hawkish stance.
However, if I had to
be in a lottery—that is, run the risk of having my number drawn, or, if
age or some other factor—including conscientious objections—rendered me
incapable of serving, I could still have to pay an annual penalty of,
say, $10,000, I might well reconsider supporting military intervention.
E Pluribus Unum?
A major contemporary concern in this country is the increasing
inequality of income, as well as the increasing socioeconomic
segmentation, in our society. Restoring some version of military
conscription or exposure would be one small counterweight.