Many other social welfare programs require you to do X or Y to keep receiving benefits as well. From a societal level its absolutely used as a social welfare program to create opportunities for lower class individuals to advance. Thats even used as a part of their recruitment pitch! If you can handle the military service its well known that its a very easy way to make 6 figure salary is to join the military get a high clearance level and then go get a job that requires the clearance after you leave.
Its also a social welfare program in the sense that its goal is to create jobs/employment/training more so than to accomplish its ostensible mission of winning wars. (see how aggressively states try to keep military bases nearby, and a little thing called the military industrial complex)
Most social welfare programs have limitations as requirements, which has a negative effect. It keeps people content with the welfare because if they work they no longer qualify for it. A lot of the time the welfare will pay similar to a job so they won't bother with the slight increase.
The military you put your 4 years in, you get your experience, and you earn your GI bill for further education (or you go into private security or whatever your job in the military was).
I've known people who went into programming after doing it in the military. Chefs, airline pilots, IT analysts, etc.
It's more of a jobs program than a welfare program.
Officers = jobs, enlisted = welfare if you want a naive partitioning. Although high-ranking NCO's probably do quite well as they actually do/direct the work. Officers just look good :-).
it's absolutely welfare. Just because you're working doesn't make it not a socialist policy for the benefit of those who join.
You can have a jobs program that pays the civilians to dig the holes and the military to burn shit in them and fill them - just because they all now have jobs doesn't make it not welfare, and you've got 100% employment rate.
> In a sense federal jobs is socialistic I suppose, which is why you should want limited government.
Before one spends a trillion that could be going to the welfare of the citizens themselves, yeah probably.
>But you do need a military force in the country
Obviously, not sure why this is said here.
>It's not genuine to say military service is a welfare program, it's more of a jobs program.
It's not genuine to say it's a jobs program either - my healthcare money is being strapped to rockets and shipped across the ocean. Are those rockets filing taxes?
> Before one spends a trillion that could be going to the welfare of the citizens themselves, yeah probably.
So your suggested system would be to do away with the jobs and just give the taxpayer money away? That's much more socialist. You need to incentivize people or they won't work. If you do away with the military, you might as well not tax the people as much in the first place rather than taking their money and distributing it in a welfare program.
> Obviously, not sure why this is said here.
It was said because it wasn't clear what you were suggesting. If you're for keeping the military I'm all for lowering the industrial war complex, but I thought we were talking about military service and the benefits we give soldiers. Salaries make up a big part of military expense but those are jobs filled and livelihoods supported. It's the rockets and money we funnel into the middle east that could be cut, not GI bills.
> It's not genuine to say it's a jobs program either - my healthcare money is being strapped to rockets and shipped across the ocean. Are those rockets filing taxes?
That's fine, along as we agree that it's not genuine to say it's a welfare program. While I don't agree with a lot (or most) of our overseas ventures, especially Middle East or LATAM, you do need a force to protect freedoms. So I agree overall in the branches, just not the leadership, unless they are reducing our presence in places where they aren't needed.
>So your suggested system would be to do away with the jobs and just give the taxpayer money away? That's much more socialist. You need to incentivize people or they won't work. If you do away with the military, you might as well not tax the people as much in the first place rather than taking their money and distributing it in a welfare program.
So to sum up your take, the military only spends money on jobs, and without the all the money we throw at the military, we'd immediately start having to make cutbacks to personnel?
I wouldn't really recommend it while warhawks are in charge, but generally it's a nice route to take.