Let's Not Draft Anybody, Pt. 1: The Problems with Tom Ricks' National Service Proposal

Hey, guys. Did I miss anything while I was gone? --Ed.

At the risk of pointing out the painfully obvious, one does not become one of the crown jewels of the Center for a New American Security, one of the very few top-drawer national security think tanks in this country, by being a gibbering idiot. Thus, we can conclude with some certainty that Tom Ricks is not a gibbering idiot, and it turns out he isn't. Indeed, he is one of the most lucid and intelligent commentators on American security issues alive today; he has won a Pulitzer Prize; he has written two of the best books about the Iraq War you are liable to come across anywhere. He is, in short, a man of substantial academic credentials and intellect, and his work has rightly been lauded by a wide range of commentators.

Imagine my shock, then, when I checked the byline of the op-ed entitled "Let's Draft Our Kids" that appeared in Tuesday's issue of The New York Times to find that, despite its advocacy of one of the most hole-ridden ideas to appear in that paper in some time (and that's no mean feat), it had been written by the aforementioned Mr. Ricks. The entire column reeks of unconscious contempt for young adults and totally conscious contempt for libertarians; as a young adult libertarian, I feel compelled to respond, but there are simply so many problems with Mr. Ricks' proposal, most of which were plainly obvious to me (and therefore should have been even more obvious to Mr. Ricks, a smarter and more accomplished man than I), that for a while Tuesday morning, I literally did not know how or where to begin.

In his first two paragraphs, Mr. Ricks echoes the sentiment, expressed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal right here in This the Finest of All States two weeks ago, that "if a nation goes to war, every city, every town needs to . . . ha[ve] skin in the game," and that the way to accomplish this is through the draft. So far, so good--I oppose the draft, but I recognize this "skin in the game" factor as a legitimate argument in its favor. The red flags start to go up in the third paragraph, where Mr. Ricks presents Option One (of three) for freshly minted high school graduates (read: conscripts) under his plan:

Some could choose 18 months of military service with low pay but excellent post-service benefits, including free college tuition.

First, how low is "low pay"? Later in the column Mr. Ricks bandies about the number $15,000 ("plus room and board"), but he does so solely in the context of his Option Two, so it's not clear exactly how much our several million new Option One conscripts would be making; let's assume it's this same $15,000. At 2,000 working hours per year, a $15,000 salary just barely satisfies the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour; many new high school graduates could do better in the private sector, and many of those who can't might be tempted to join the all-volunteer military, where, as it currently stands, an Army private makes 34% more than this in base pay alone after just four months of service. This is not a trivial concern--many new high school graduates who have drawn the socioeconomic short straw are obligated by their circumstances to become instant breadwinners. Instituting Mr. Ricks' proposal would take crucial economic decisions out of the hands of America's poorest families.

Second, the fact that members of the existing all-volunteer force already get substantial college funding benefits notwithstanding, free college tuition for all high school graduates who want it is precisely the sort of panacean, "silver bullet"-style wishful thinking that has inflated the higher education bubble to its already precarious extent. Such a program would be monumentally expensive (well into the tens, and potentially the hundreds, of billions of dollars a year) and only exacerbate the imbalance between the number of new college graduates and the number of available jobs that require a baccalaureate degree. (This is all to say nothing of the fact that forgoing college to enter a field that does not require post-secondary education or to obtain vocational training is an eminently reasonable choice for a substantial proportion of high school graduates, and that the federal government's current college-for-all mentality flatly ignores the reality of differing skill sets among young adults and has contributed to a breathtaking increase in tuition costs.)

These conscripts would not be deployed . . .

Wait, what? But what about the "skin in the game" factor? If the goal is to collectivize the sacrifice of active national service--which it seems to be, since Mr. Ricks approvingly quotes Gen. McChrystal as saying that "every town, every city needs to be at risk" (emphasis added) if the country goes to war--how exactly is that goal served if it will still be only the volunteer forces who are actually called to arms and placed in harm's way? This restriction, by definition, severs any connection between Mr. Ricks' proposed program and the justification for it that he offers; in my view, the only way to reconcile the two (and to provide any semblance of coherence to Mr. Ricks' thesis) is to assume that the nation's teenagers--and their parents--would consider the non-combat duties Mr. Ricks has dreamed up for them to be as much of a sacrifice as clearing a Kandahar Province foxhole of Taliban militants. Those must be some pretty serious non-combat duties, then, eh?

. . . but could perform tasks currently outsourced at great cost to the Pentagon: paperwork, painting barracks, mowing lawns, driving generals around, and generally doing lower-skills tasks so professional soldiers don’t have to.

Oh. I guess not. 

Note that this implies a totally different thought process than the one with which Mr. Ricks began our adventure; at first the draft was necessary because every segment of the population must risk life and limb when the country is in danger, but now the draft is necessary because a) it saves money, and b) real soldiers have more important things to do than paperwork. I suspect that Mr. Ricks' idea would have drawn substantially more backlash if he had stated it more bluntly: "Let's force the nation's eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds to do clerical work and manual labor, for the military, at wages well below the prevailing market rate, for no other immediately apparent reasons than cost-cutting and that such things are beneath the dignity of a 'professional soldier.'"

If they want to stay, they could move into the professional force and receive weapons training, higher pay and better benefits.

Of course, if they've got two brain cells to rub together--which, contrary to popular opinion, most teenagers do--they would have joined the "professional force" straight out of high school, and cut out the intervening year and a half of doing menial work for shitty pay altogether.

Sensibly, Mr. Ricks realizes that not all eighteen-year-olds are cut out for the military, and so we have Option Two:

Those who don’t want to serve in the army could perform civilian national service for a slightly longer period and equally low pay — teaching in low-income areas, cleaning parks, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, or aiding the elderly. After two years, they would receive similar benefits like tuition aid.

Well, at least we're making progress, but consider for a moment: what jobs, exactly, qualify as being part of "civilian national service"? We've seen that Mr. Ricks includes teaching in low-income areas, but what about teaching other underserved populations, like children and adolescents with learning disabilities? Aiding the elderly would allow you to fulfill what Mr. Ricks believes to be your patriotic duty, but would aiding the homeless? Again, this is not some minor quibble; the point is that lots of jobs that might easily fall under the heading of "civilian national service" are already filled by people who depend on those jobs for their livelihoods. What exactly will the 35-year-old inner-city middle school English teacher--who has devoted the last decade of his or her life to a noble cause, who more than likely has a spouse and at least one child, who has a mortgage to pay--do when he or she is displaced by a terrified, inexperienced nineteen-year-old, making half (or less) of his or her salary, whose desire to be there is questionable? It's not like he or she can just go get another teaching job--all of those are being filled with other terrified, inexperienced nineteen-year-olds--and trying to retain him or her while still absorbing the influx of new teachers would vitiate the national cost savings Mr. Ricks touts as one of the great boons of his plan. Every sanitation, construction, and social worker in America would suddenly feel a threat to his or her job security from somebody who last month was worrying about the AP U.S. History exam and what to wear to Prom, and who may only be there because the alternatives are prison, the military, or (as we shall see shortly) permanent consignment to a national underclass. For hundreds of thousands of those workers, that threat would be realized, and Mr. Ricks gives us no clue as to where they go from there. (And what makes Mr. Ricks think that the average recent high school graduate is even qualified to teach algebra, build a bridge, or provide care to the elderly? At present, many of the jobs that would be part of his "civilian national service" require months or years of training, teaching being the most notable.) And, of course, Option Two suffers from the same problems of putting poor families in an even more difficult situation and worsening the higher education bubble as Option One.

Mr. Ricks, though, has saved his worst, and his most condescending, for last. Option Three:

And libertarians who object to a draft could opt out.

Because, as we all know, only those craaaazy libertarians object to a draft. It's not like anybody else could possibly have a moral, ethical, philosophical, or religious compunction about compulsory service.

Those who declined to help Uncle Sam . . .

About this phrase "decline to help"--to borrow from Inigo Montoya, I do not think it means what Mr. Ricks thinks it means. To me, "resisting forcible attempts to place one in a full-time job for which one's skill set may or may not be suited, and pay one near-poverty wages, for as much as two years" is not "declining to help" one's country. To me, "paying taxes one's entire goddamn life" is not "declining to help" one's country. To me, "choosing to contribute to one's community in ways other than the ones Tom Ricks considers meaningful" is not "declining to help" one's country.

. . . would in return pledge to ask nothing from him — no Medicare, no subsidized college loans and no mortgage guarantees.

To be fair, I'm all for the "no mortgage guarantees" bit--for everybody, not just libertarians. But if anyone who wants one will get a "free" college education (the quotes are there because TANSTAAFL), demand for college is going to shoot through the roof, which will lead to an increase in the actual price of college. With no such thing as a federal education loan existing anymore, those who refuse the federal government's oh-so-generous offer, unless their families are independently wealthy enough to fund the truly exorbitant cost of college out of pocket (which few are), will need to find another source of aid; that source probably won't be institutions of higher learning themselves (which would have to raise prices even more in order to have the cash on hand to offer aid), and it certainly won't be the states (most of whom are in dire financial straits at this time). That's where private lenders will step into the breach--whereupon I can almost guarantee that members of Congress will denounce the use of private loans by draft objectors to fund their educations as a dastardly "loophole" and outlaw private education loans. Even if they don't, Mr. Ricks' proposal, by handing out bachelor's degrees like candy, would effectively destroy the marginal value of a bachelor's degree and make it much more difficult (in terms of both sheer cost and availability of lenders) for all those not benefiting from this educational largesse to get beyond high school.

Objectors, then, would begin their adult lives at a serious financial disadvantage, either because of their lack of a college education or because of the massive debt they accrued in obtaining one. Throughout their adult lives, they would still be required to pay the same taxes as their compatriots to support programs from which they have permanently forfeited any right to reap benefits. And, once they hit 65 years of age, they will be completely uninsured, because there is, by federal law, no private alternative to Medicare. The federal government will have actively attempted to make such citizens poorer for the last 47 years of their lives, and it will then require them to pay all of their health care expenses out of pocket at precisely the stage in life when such expenses are at their most onerous. I wonder if Mr. Ricks is at peace with the fact that his proposal selectively targets a certain segment of the population for a higher likelihood of poverty on the basis of their political beliefs; I don't think I need to list examples of other countries that have done that.

Those who want minimal government can have it.

The most insulting sentence in the column. "Ha ha! Hoist by your own petard, you nutty individualists!"

There is nothing "minimal" about a government with all but compulsory national service, nor about a government that, by imposing legal, political, and economic barriers, attempts to deprive a minority political group of equality of opportunity. Libertarians would be getting the benefits of a minimal government while bearing more than our share of the costs of a decidedly non-minimal government.

After laying out his tripartite Morton's fork, Mr. Ricks insists that political opposition to his plan can be overcome because "America has already witnessed far less benign forms of conscription." Of course it has--during actual national emergencies, for active-duty military service, when a national security crisis left no other options; the only exception was during the Vietnam War, and Mr. Ricks himself identifies (obliquely) what a disaster the Vietnam drafts were. (And I do question how "benign" Mr. Ricks' proposal is, seeing as it, unlike the other drafts in this country's history, demands either service or self-sabotage out of every single draft-eligible person, i.e. every single eighteen-year-old, male or female.) But Mr. Ricks isn't done rationalizing how his proposal can survive the political gauntlet:

A new draft that maintains the size and the quality of the current all-volunteer force . . . 

You know what else would maintain the size and the quality of the current all-volunteer force? Keeping the current all-volunteer force.

. . . saves the government money through civilian national service . . .

Suuuure it does. (More on this in a minute.)

. . . and frees professional soldiers from performing menial tasks would appeal to many constituencies.

Professional soldiers, maybe, but to some civilians (e.g., me), it's a little insulting. And you know what constituencies this certainly would not appeal to? The great majority of young people, and, more importantly, a substantial proportion of parents. That's tough sledding.

Mr. Ricks' answer to the question of what to do with what amounts to four million poorly paid androids every year is similarly unsatisfactory:

jobs that governments do in other countries but which have been deemed too expensive in this one, like providing universal free day care . . . 

TANSTAAFL, and I think this is the sort of job most parents would want done by somebody a little more knowledgeable and trustworthy than a poorly paid teenager who's just marking time until he or she can get the hell to college.

. . . or delivering meals to elderly shut-ins.

You mean like these people willingly do, for free, out of the goodness of their hearts?

And if too many people applied for the 18-month military program, then a lottery system could be devised — the opposite of the 1970s-era system where being selected was hardly desirable. The rest could perform nonmilitary national service.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that if we're going to have a draft, it should be the military, not the civilian economy, that should have to figure out a way to absorb an overabundance of mostly unskilled labor.

Mr. Ricks then, at long last, turns his attention to the cost of this program. He never characterizes this cost more precisely than being "billions of dollars" (which is convenient for him, because "billions of dollars" is precisely the amount of money he claims it would save), so I'll do it for him. Every year, four million people will arrive on the government payroll, each of whom will be owed at least eighteen months' salary at $15,000 per year. Right away, that's at least $90 billion added to the annual federal budget. Suppose housing them all costs an average of $5,000 per year each (which seems awfully conservative, until you realize that Mr. Ricks proposes housing these millions of new conscripts on closed military bases and in V.A. hospitals--parents will love the sound of that, I'm sure), and remember that each new person added to the payroll is owed at least eighteen months' housing. There's another $30 billion, minimum. And if the marginal cost to them is zero, it's not a stretch to assume that the vast majority of these young people will wind up going to college; being extremely conservative and saying that the cost of a single college education under this program will be $75,000, that is, potentially, $300 billion. Every year. We're already at $420 billion; if this program is to be deficit-neutral, that would necessitate an increase in the annual tax bill of an average family of four of $5,400 (about 11% of the median household income in 2006), before even accounting for the costs associated with administering this massive new program. Nowhere does Mr. Ricks give any indication of how much money the Pentagon would save by no longer contracting out its mindless tasks; he does suggest that "[t]aking food to an elderly shut-in might keep that person from having to move into a nursing home," which is plausibly true in some cases but does not provide even the flimsiest support for the notion that the civilian service corps would be worth its government outlays. (Mr. Ricks envisions that one of the ways this program could save the government money is by including in it an increase in the length of service time required for military retirement, from twenty years to thirty. Now there's a political winner.)

As we approach the end of Mr. Ricks' piece, there's this gem:

Imagine how many local parks could be cleaned and how much could be saved if a few hundred New York City school custodians were 19, energetic and making $15,000 plus room and board, instead of 50, tired and making $106,329, the top base salary for the city’s public school custodians, before overtime.

Yes, because when I was nineteen, I surely would have been "energetic" if I had been cleaning a New York City public school for $15,000 per annum, knowing that, had I taken the same job without the federal government's "help," I might be getting paid seven times as much. Even if I were, with the current political climate's unrelenting focus on JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS, this idea is nowhere, politically or financially, without a clear picture of what that tired fifty-year-old now-former custodian will do with himself or herself. (Other than clean local parks, I suppose, because otherwise I fail to see how the parks to which Mr. Ricks refers enter into the calculation at all. But then, what happens to the park custodians?)

In the penultimate paragraph, Mr. Ricks opines that the cost savings could help get public sector unions on board with his idea, because "[s]etting up a new non-career tier of cheap, young labor might be a way of preserving existing jobs for older, more skilled, less mobile union workers." Leaving aside the fact that this seems highly unlikely to win the unions over (especially since union bosses, not being stupid, are capable of recognizing and dealing with the threat that a large influx of potential new job-seekers has on their power, no matter how it's presented to them), this is a textbook example of exploiting the relative powerlessness of young adults to keep older generations in the style to which they've become accustomed. I have little doubt that Mr. Ricks is aware that it is exactly this phenomenon that led to the "budget crunch" of which he warns in the immediately preceding sentence, and to the frustrations of the current generation of youth.

Mr. Ricks ends by reiterating his belief that his proposal would "make Americans think more carefully before going to war." As explained above, this proposal doesn't actually provide the sense of shared danger necessary to instigate that more careful thought, but even if it did, it's not the American people you have to convince if you're trying to avoid a war, it's the leaders they elect--and thinking that those leaders have the slightest compunction about sending Joe Blow from Peoria off to die would be catastrophically naive.

I have the greatest respect for Tom Ricks as a commentator and public intellectual; I suspect that limited space and the unforgiving red pen of an editor had much to do with the shortcomings of this idea as expressed in his op-ed. I won't presume that Mr. Ricks has the time or the motivation to respond to so lowly a critic, but I will invite him to do so in the hopes that I may get lucky. In the meantime, I will be writing an alternative proposal for national service that, I hope, will address the issues I've pointed out here.