Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass....... The final decision that probably sealed the fate of the Roman Empire was to hire their military from outside rather than draft the Romans themselves to military service to protect their homeland. Certainly the pay scale for a hired military was much more than a drafted one and this expenditure plus a heavy service load to the Roman Populace and the citizenry's desire to do nothing to support themselves but let the government take care of them instead finally took its toll on the stability of the Roman economy, and unable to pay its army, no one to defend it, Rome was invaded, sacked, and the empire was no more. It's an old old story, but one that has been repeated again and again throughout history. You would think that sooner or later some society would let history be it's teacher and not make the same mistakes again. And someday in the future, one may do so but unfortunately we are not to be the ones. Our economy is in such a sad state and there are no signs that anyone in authority has any intent of saving it. Like the Romans, we have hired our military. So far our forces are still American, but things are not well. When we went to an all volunteer military in the '70's, what that really done was to remove the 'well to do' populace's children from military service and up the pay to better than a bad job making it attractive for the ones unable to educate themselves and vie for the jobs taken by the upper middle class and rich, to make a living with benefits and retirement whether their heart was in it or not. The enlisted soldier who passed basic training in 1965 and in the fourth month of service had a basic pay of $87.80. In 2005, the same soldier of four months had a basic pay of $1,142.00. All of the standard bohunk malarky we usually spew out about God bless the soldiers and the support thereof has no place in my point. What does have to do with it is the absence of the well to do in the military and the question of "Why shouldn't we have a draft and require all Americans of a certain age group be obliged to serve their country for specified amount of time for a much reduced stipend regardless of where they're from or their social or financial standing, no exceptions". For those who desire a military career, after the first hitch, the pay should be increased to reflect the outside economy. In today's military we can't afford to pay the 2.6 million what we've agreed to, and we need a military twice as big as we have, which is out of the question financially. A revival of the draft and a true return to 'serving your country' would certainly help. We have over 7,000,000 individuals on our disability rolls and the average paid to each is somewhere over $1,600.00 each month. This includes the money paid separately to their spouse and ever how many children they may have at home, plus not in that amount is the health care extended to the entire family. Interestingly enough, most of those I know are bitter about the amount they recieve and think it should be more. From my self-employed health care uninsured vantage point it looks to me like about 7 out of ten recieving disability in my community would be much healthier and happier if they got themselves a job. Abuse of that program is undefinable. I don't expect anything to change, instead I expect to witness history repeating itself, as in the Roman Empire................