This makes sense. Those positions are considered ESSENTIAL after all.
Especially for the wealthy business owners who rake in profit from others doing these jobs. You want to run a business like that? Learn what your work force has to put up with. Shit, I'd make them do it for 4 years like military service.
Maybe these ultra wealthy people would actually become human again instead of being empty voids that suck up an entire economy's worth of money and then just hoard it.
Miller believes a standardized test at the high school level, called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, should be administered to all students to help funnel potential recruits into positions within the military, based on their skills and intellect levels.
Let me take a wild guess which people would get "funneled into positions" as officers, and who would end up as fodder infantry.
People going officer usually already know they're going officer either because they're in ROTC/JROTC or already have a plan for college. The poors are generally the ones that end up enlisted because they have fewer options. This is already the case.
So your wild guess would have probably been spot on. Required service just means they'll have extra poors.
I was in the nuclear power program in the Navy. They're some of the smartest people I've ever worked with. It was the first time I was the dumbest guy in the room and, let me tell you, that'll humble you very quickly. So they're definitely not trying to make the smartest people officers because, while the officers there were fine, they had nothing on some of these guys.
Oh, sure - I knew I was going to get that technically wrong. I was trying to use the least number of words to express that it would be quite simple to use this kind of thing to put the "right" people in charge of decision-making, and the "wrong" people into deadly combat situations, or at the very least, into positions lowly enough that they can be systematically conditioned to stifle their own political will.
"Right" and "wrong" above can certainly mean stupid shit like "skin color" or "ethnicity," but I was actually thinking about it in terms of political ideology. Dead people can't vote.
Everyone in my school had to take the ASVAB. It was a complete waste of time. Hell, I just filled in bubbles at random because I had no interest in dying in Iraq and didn't care if I passed the test. Unfortunately, I passed the test and got so many calls from recruiters for years.
Exactly, none of them would ever want this. I will never understand taking a position on something where I don't immediately put myself in that position first. People suck...
Fr this is a great idea (National Service, but not necessarily military service). We could train carpenters and electricians, repair people, maintenance and construction jobs. We could train medical assistants and dental hygienists', vet techs, and build houses (high density housing located in an area with good public transit, of course), and railways, and so much more with our tax dollars.
And yes, a strong defense is important, so military service would count too. Like it or not lots of people across the world rely on American defense, and its wrong to betray those allies and obligations like Obama did when he let Russia take Crimea.
And the best part is (in my version of events) all those people who performed national service would qualify for TriCare and the GI Bill, so we don't even need new programs. It won't be easy, of course, but it gives our youth skills in higher education and trades, helps alleviate the housing crisis, improves American infrastructure, and invests in our future.
I'd also like to see some sort of UBI after the service ends to catch anyone who still struggles after but I expect that'd be relatively rare.
I mean, what you're describing FDRs "New Deal" something modern progressives are tying to bring back but republicans and "moderates" won't let happen...
Our infrastructure is crumbling because after FDR built it from the New Deal, we just stopped doing all that scary socialism.
