Socialism for the elite but not for the masses?
The military in general is like a complete socialist economy: socialized health care, home loan programs, car loan programs, banking, insurance, housing vouchers, tenant and homeowner protections, groceries at cost, retirement and pension, and to top it all off the thing itself is the country’s largest jobs program.
My husband and I, who are both Enlisted, have been saying for years that the military is proof that a form of socialism CAN work in the US. It’s not “true” socialism because we still have an owning class, but ffs, it’s a goddamned start. And its not just Active Duty who gets taken care of. Its also dependents, veterans (to an extent), and retirees. So there is the proof that the model is scalable.
At this point, I honestly believe that the biggest reason reason the government won’t let the US have free or even affordable Healthcare isn’t solely because of profits. It’s because they won’t be able to dangle free healthcare over the heads of poor teens to get them to Enlist. Same thing with the pension for re-enlistments.
I feel like those two items are purposefully withheld from the public to keep the military stacked.
To add to this, something I like to point out to people, but (for the US) only ~60% of military personnel are ever deployed. Of those 60% only 10-20% will ever see combat. To top that off ~25% of the military are actually civilian service members, people who work for the military but are not soldiers.
So in summary, for each soldier that sees combat there are:
- ~6 deployed soldiers who will never see combat.
- ~11 non-deployed soldiers who never will be.
- ~6 civilian military staff who will probably never need to move for work.
Of these 24 people, all have access to the commissary, retirement and pension, top tier insurance, paid child care, up to 26 days of paid time off with 13 sick days and 11 fed holidays. The only things the military civilians don’t get are the VA, loan programs, and special protections.
So unless you’re a complete block head with no skills or talent your odds of joining the military and basically getting socialism with no risks is pretty high. Remember this the next time someone gets mouthy about respecting “the troops” or “serving their country,” odds are they didn’t do shit.
I used to work with a whole group of guys who their whole military career (20 years) was running a wastewater treatment plant on an Air Force base in the US, that’s it.
It may have changed since then, but after my dad left the USAF in the early '80s, my mom was a civilian employee on the base for a bunch of years, and we didn’t have access to any of the additional benefits. I know that we couldn’t go to Aaffes, the Px, or use any base services. Not sure about retirement / insurance at that time, but we certainly didn’t take advantage of insurance if it was available.
About the only thing we had access to was some of the Recreation services: My mom worked at Arts and Crafts, and that was attached to the Auto Hobby and Wood Shop so they let employees use those facilities, along with the place where we could rent lawnmowers and other recreation equipment.
Yeah, it may have changed. Here is the website for commissary eligibility, it looks like civilian employees get limited access (mainly grocery store like items). Here is a link to the Exchange, they get limited privileges or conditional unlimited privileges depending on their situation. Here is the website posting the Army Civilian benefits. Looking online they do have access to on base housing, but active duty get higher priority and may have to wait for an opening.
Here is the general DOD website for the civilian employee benefits, it looks like they get general federal employee insurance (generally considered to be good), and the general federal pension (20 years of service by 50 years old). This site also has more information about the exchange and family care.
Thanks.
Looks like it has improved quite a bit over the years.
Indeed, the military tells you which uniform to wear on a daily basis. I do not understand the soldiers who say they despise socialism, when they’re in the middle of it.
what has telling someone what to wear to do with socialism?
sounds very exclusive, though. Is it really ‘complete’?
Hey I put like in there 😆
Its not just the commissary. The entire way the military works is functional communism. Housing is assigned by rank, is available to anyone currently in contract, as well as healthcare and obviously, work. Pay is rated by rank and not by position, a Physician assistant gets the same rank pay as a Lt working command staff in any other unit. There is no capitalism in the DoD at all not even under their procurement systems.
Base pay may be the same, but there are several incentive pays available for various duties. Flight pay, sea pay, jump pay, hazardous duty pay, etc.
I knew someone would point out “hazard pay”. It is not really common, but if youre gonna split hairs; what about BAQ/BAH? The pay differential isnt any more significant than shift differentials. There is a difference between flight crew and ground crew in aviation and they get different hours and pay, but the base rate is absolutely the same by rank.
I was agreeing with you, just pointing out that there is some variation depending on the duties assigned.
No disagreement implied! I was attempting to ignore the smaller rules to avoid confusion, but I knew someone would point it out. Much love, brother!
No worries man. Text can be hard to interpret tone sometimes. Right back at you friend.
The U.S. Military currently has a lot of problems with housing, feeding, and providing healthcare for service members. Check out USAG’s hawaii barracks for example. There’s a large number of lawsuits against the living conditions of family-housing. Dining Facilities that are intended and required to feed service members simply don’t.
Until recently Service Members couldn’t do anything if there was medical malpractice against them (and there was a LOT). And the act allowing medical malpractice suits was not retroactive, meaning everybody who served before 2020 was simply fucked.
Commissaries are (usually) genuinely good though. No complaints.
Understand that the government provided living conditions are not as good as you may be imagining.
Anyways here’s my personal anecdotes to bitch about: Goodfellow AFB many years ago. Sewage was leaking into the barracks’ (already shitty) Concho water pipes making it unsafe to drink and bathe. Lasted weeks. The water pipe above my room in particular was dripping onto our fridge and smelled like shit. I made a dumb fuckin gummy-bear funnel that diverted the leak into our sink because every single god damn person I asked to fix this problem said it wasn’t their issue.
and here’s the barracks room I was issued at my first duty station (that’s all mold):
Alright Airman, I, no We in your command staff have heard you! We want to do better…./s
Hawaii barracks has been complained about by everyone since…forever I think. The contaminated drinking water on bases is endemic. Moldy old barracks aside the family living conditions were always bad and only get worse with age and wear. I didnt mean to imply that anything was good about it, and the complaints definitely outweigh the compliments on military living with or without family accommodations. There is a lot of room for improvement, whats killer is that all the wrong people are acutely aware of the glaring issues.
So, just like communism? Only half joking here.
Housing is assigned by rank, is available to anyone currently in contract
Not only that, but government owned housing is assigned not based on pay, rank, or whatever, but size of household. So an E-7 with no kids gets a 2 bedroom and an E-3 with three kids gets a four bedroom (depending on age/gender of the kids). So according to need.
Housing is assigned by rank
Pay is rated by rank
Is there really a rank in communism? Who decides the details of a rank?
Dawg, I dont know man…. To each according to their needs is kinda hard to subscribe to before the definition of a post-scarcity society, considering we all have the same needs generally speaking. To use Stalinist USSR as an example work was assigned according to ability, and in some cases who you were or who you knew. Someone had to work the party lines and admin to assign this stuff based on “something”
Edit: i know this example isnt real communism
in communism, ‘class is abolished. The ability to earn more than other workers is almost nonexistent.’ Therefore i’d argue that a rank or housing and pay by rank, are very counterproductive.
Stalinist just means authoritarian to me. There was no equality
It’s amazing how having health care, housing, consistent employment, and a lot of support services also end up creating the best US school system. But the radical left is hell bent on destroying the world. \s
The largest social program in human history is the US military.
the best US school system
what a flex 😐
It is, because the US numbers are so incredibly dragged down by the worst of its school systems. I live in New Jersey, and we rank highly and are considered globally competitive (although I never really understand how you can compare them, they’re very different approaches to learning), but if you go to the shit hole parts of the US it’s a stark contrast. That being said, NJ has over 500 school systems, so there’s even stark contrast within the state.
But yeah, the DOD school system is consistently the best place to educate your kids. And it’s all free (if you’re doing your part).
And it’s all free (if you’re doing your part).
🤔
So Mamdani’s idea was not even new, and took it from the military? What was all that fuss about supposedly communist run groceries?
Because benefits people at the cost of corporations.
At least with DeCA there is a stone wall of needing to not die during service to access it. So it doesn’t threaten corporations as much.
There’s also the fact that corporations greatly benefit from imperialism. You can’t have imperialism without the military.
But, if you die your family gets commissary access for life…
As long as you stay near a base. Cheaper to pay more at whole foods than drive to the closest Commissary.
What really matters is the exchange and tax free on big appliances.
If you think the military personnel that use a commissary are “elite”, you’re sadly mistaken. Vast majority are enlisted personnel that are no better off than the average blue collar types.
I’m going to let you people in on a secret: The American military’s support system is the very definition of socialism. Healthcare, shopping, housing, education all subsidized. You people literally use socialism to support your primary arm of anti-socialism.
And ironically, as a tax payer, I’m not allowed to shop there even though I have access to the base…
If you could have joined, you could shop there if you retired. John Q Taxpayer can only shop there if you have done the time.
Its more than a grocery store. I knew a guy who was buying german VCRs in the late 80’s and early 90’s and shipping them home. The german machines didn’t have the copy protection circuit in them and would make perfect copies of any tape. The machines were all bought at cost from a US base’s PX.
That would be the Base Exchange/Post Exchange, but it, the Commissary, Shoppettes (convenience stores), and Class Six (liquor stores) all fall under the Army Air Force Exchange Service. The Navy has their own service.
Funny enough there is still rationing. If you are in an overseas base, alcohol and cigarettes are rationed to cut down on black market sales to host nation citizens. We still bought stuff for our friends, though. Bourbon and cigarettes were super cheap compared to what they could buy on the economy. Coffee was also on my ration card, but I don’t think it was actually rationed. No one ever signed it off.
Thanks for the added detail. It was only the end result I saw. He got out in 90 right before Iran invaded Kuwait. It is unlikely he would have been deployed. He was Cobol programmer.
You can see the prices here. These are sales flyers, but pretty on par with Kroger or Walmart neighborhood stores. Little more expensive than lidl though. https://shop.commissaries.com/
More expensive than WinCo as well. Interesting.
But also the only place to get American goods in lots and lots of countries. I believe they’re also duty free.
And those of us who retain the right after service can still shop there
There’s also the liqour/tobbaco store (Class 6).
It’s like the VA of grocery stores, or like the Medicare of health insurance, or the public schools of education, or the taxpayer-funded firefighters or judiciary or police or highways or ports or bridges or hydropower dams or the forest service or national parks or public health and science and technology research or NASA
LOL at the idea that we don’t do this sort of thing all over the place
Do any of you guys know what communism or socialism really are?
This thread sounds like if they offer subsidies for goods, housing, school system and so on, then we can ignore you can only get in if they like you and they use the entire countries tax payer money to subsidize goods for themselves only. Must be socialism. We can ignore its about war.
If Socialism means collective ownership and social welfare, then where is the collective ownership in your examples? Many can’t get in the US military, but pay for it.
TIL the military is the elite
They have one on Moffett Field that’s the only one for hundreds of miles. They’re closing it next year along with a whole bunch more. Only service members and a handful of civilians who work in certain departments can shop there. I wanna go with my neighbor one day to check it out before they close it (he’s enlisted). I’ve heard it’s significantly cheaper than Safeway, et al.
It certainly can be cheaper than other groceries. The beef is cheaper but its also a lower grade beef than what is sold in most grocers. Usda choice instead of prime, lowers costs but tbf technically isnt a direct competition with Safeway etc. There are some items you can certainly get cheaper but others are more, toiletries and such are usually close if not more at the commissaries
