As the son of a son of a father who wouldn't have gone to college without WWII-era tuition assistance, can confirm it changes entire family trajectories.
My grandfather had the work ethic and intelligence in him, subsequently proven, but was born dirt poor with a snowball's chance in hell he could have afforded college without the GI Bill.
The military is an option which largely accepts you if you say "Yes" and can pass a basic intelligence test. Those are the only requirements. Not your family name. Not your family wealth. Not (now) your race or gender or sexual orientation.
And in trade for that, they open up benefits that change lives.
It certainly shouldn't be the only option, but that it is an option is better than not existing.
Same thing here. My grandfather was excited when his dad found some pallets 'that fell off the back of a truck' so they could have a floor for the tent they lived in outside Portland, and not see the rats. (funny when people in PDX complain about the homeless problem, my grandpa was in those cities in the 30's and 40s)
GI bill put him into college, and set him up with an eductation that setup my mom and her 6 siblings with a 'normal' middle class life. Not too shabby for a man that literally grew up dirt poor.
I knew a Soldier with a 32 ACT (yes, I double checked as that's a great score) from East St Louis. Guidance counselors and everything else failed them, so they joined the mil.
How that kid (making an adult's decision by joining) wasn't scooped up by basically anyone other than their local recruiter blew my mind. If you spend some time around the military jobs that require smarts, these stories are very common. The non-high test score jobs tend to be staffed by very solid and smart people who just didn't have many other options at the time.
Soldiers from enlisted to General can and often are idiots and by glorifying them one risks the same risk as glorifying a professional athlete or any other symbol, but in aggregate the above story is common.
It's rare that survivorship bias gets to be used quite so literally.
Nearly 300,000 families also had their trajectories changed because their loved ones died.
The military as a class on-ramp disproportionately harms the poor, and ethically that's wrong. It's almost literally a lottery where you're gambling your life in exchange for basic needs.
> Nearly 300,000 families also had their trajectories changed because their loved ones died.
What are you referring to here? 300,000 is a specific number and you qualify it with "because their loved ones died". Let's assume you're talking about active military deaths, which are less than 100,000 since 1945 [1], the vast majority of which is Vietnam and Korea.
Up until the Vietnam War, the draft was a significant factor. That's not really a factor because you have no control over it.
You'll also note that my comment was specifically about the Air Force Guard and Reserve. Your chances of getting deployed to a war zone and dying are incredibly low and so many roles aren't active combat anyway. Unlike active service you enlist ofr a particular job. If you sign up to do logistics in Ohio. your risks are pretty low.
The military mostly recruits from the middle class now. Unfortunately, poor people often can't meet the eligibility requirements due to medical problems (especially obesity), poor fitness, criminal record, history of drug use, lack of a high school diploma, or low test scores. Of course there are exceptions but relatively few. The modern military is pretty selective in whom they take.
Many years ago my uncle got in minor trouble with the law as a young man. The judge gave him a choice: join the Navy or go to jail. The Navy worked out pretty well for him, but today he probably wouldn't even have that option to get his life back on track.
It's the responsibility of the government and by extension, the military. I suppose you could blame society at-large because we elect our representatives, but the majority of Americans already support single-payer healthcare and free or reduced college tuition.
It's disturbing to me that it's normal to concentrate efforts on recruiting poor teenagers to fight wars. The focus on the poor also has the effect of disproportionately impacting minorities.
Even if you survive, over the past decade hundreds of thousands of veterans have ended up with PTSD and even then they're left to fight for proper treatment under the VA. The VA has been failing veterans for decades and in some cases causes additional harm, including using experimental and ineffective treatment for covid while under their care (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7276049/).
Americans may claim that they support healthcare or education reform in the abstract, but they don't actually vote that way. Most people aren't willing to voluntarily pay higher taxes or cut other programs in order to actually implement those policies.
I'd like the government to give me all sorts of stuff for free as long as someone else is paying.
We're all already paying for it through health insurance companies, who are siphoning off huge profits.
Unless you're living off-grid the government already gives you mountains of "free" stuff paid for by taxes! It's an enormously long list of utilities and services that contains everything from fire departments to food safety. Mostly things that shouldn't be profit centers.
unless you know recruiters personally and have more than an anecdotal example or policy to share, that specific targeting, especially in terms of a policy, doesn't happen but yes recruiters will go to the high schools in poor areas.
My grandfather had the work ethic and intelligence in him, subsequently proven, but was born dirt poor with a snowball's chance in hell he could have afforded college without the GI Bill.
The military is an option which largely accepts you if you say "Yes" and can pass a basic intelligence test. Those are the only requirements. Not your family name. Not your family wealth. Not (now) your race or gender or sexual orientation.
And in trade for that, they open up benefits that change lives.
It certainly shouldn't be the only option, but that it is an option is better than not existing.