The person you are quoting is Clausewitz. Clausewitz, of course, lived long before the invention of nuclear weapons. War may be politics by other means but those means are largely obsolete. This is also why his people eventually gave it up and moved on, changing their strategy and accomplishing in fifty years of peace what they could never manage in 2,500 years of war.
Anyway, the distinction you are trying to dismiss is very real. Some jobs are overpaid and some are not. Some are overly comfortable for a person with a given level of skill and responsibility and others are not.
Should radiologists get paid twice what GPs do because of the system they work in? Probably not, but they do; because the system is broken and needs to be fixed. By the same token, because the system is broken, military service is by and large an overly sweet deal for people who couldn't even make it as janitors in the civilian world.
I took the FSOT. It's a hard examination, one of the hardest standardized exams there is. (I passed with flying colors but did not make it to the next stage of the selection, probably because I didn't intern for a legislator, and I am monolingual). Funny enough I have the FSOT "Pass" certificate tacked to my wall, just above my computer monitor and to the right, but my college diploma has a spaghetti sauce stain and is folded up in a drawer with some old utility bills. Make of that what you will.
Anyone with the intelligence and skill to pass the exam and the rest of the even more demanding intake process is a bargain buy at $80k/yr plus benefits. That is significantly less pay than many jobs that require less commitment, intelligence and skills (e.g., lawyer, middle manager, truck driver, civil clerk, accountant, technician). You can't say that of jarheads.
Yes, we need a military. We also need garbagemen and Rent-A-Cops. Just because someone or something is necessary does not mean it is heroic awesomeness. If we are spending a third of our budget on defense, more than the next two dozen or whatever countries combined, and employing some three million reprobates in defense and defense-related industries, then we can conclude that spending on a "need" has become largely waste and that those who have benefited are simply not earning their keep.
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I don't deny you read and write well. And you're basically intelligent. Neither functional literacy or basic intelligence means much without education and mental organization. That includes having a decent knowledge base and critical thinking skills.
Schooling isn't the only place people pick up knowledge and skills, old pal.
Did I say anything about schooling?
No...because you're right, it isn't.
The problem is, you don't do the things that are viable alternatives - in fact quite superior - to school. Such as read books and think about what you've read. That is how one builds a decent knowledge base and critical thinking skills: by reading many different books, by many different authors, with many different perspectives, comparing things, the world gradually comes into focus. Having a view of the world in crisp focus is the opposite of broad and vague but incorrect generalizations.
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This is almost a 'no true Scotsman' argument, since you're saying no one that disagrees with you can be a true American. People are driven by incentives and disincentives, and the incentives to "cooperate," as you keep phrasing it (when you're forced into doing something you're not cooperating, you're complying), don't outweigh the disincentives. The ACA is putting a new burden on employers but it gives them no pay-off for picking up that burden. Aside from insurance costs there are administrative and reporting costs. The ACA makes the federal government into that woman who wants a fancy dinner and expects her date to pay for it.
The issue is not that you have a difference of opinion, it is the assumptions and values underlying that difference of opinion. Any political opinion is acceptable to me, no matter how divergent from my own, so long the good of the American people is at the apex of one's political hierarchy of values.
Your underlying assumption - your supreme good - is the good of employers, wealthy businesses, etc, and not the community at large. Having a different idea about what would be good for the country is fine; arguing that giving those who have done well for themselves an "incentive" is more important than the good of the country is not.
The Fed isn't "getting a fancy dinner". Workers are getting healthcare. You are turning reality on its head. Fat cats are being forced give a bit back to the country that has given them so much.
Obviously the country did something for you too: the education and financial support that comes with military service - so I don't see the point in making the leg up exclusive to military welfare.
Oh and GL react. I am sure it will work out.
