Lol yeah 35k to sign your life away to the government. Ill just smoke weed in my duck costume thank you very much.
I think nowadays it’s more like “35k to join the World Terrorism Organisation ©®™”
I’d choose the duck too
America is terrorist?
Always has been.
Same as it ever was
You’re the one firing missiles at ships in the Red Sea?
what, two terrorists can’t shoot at each other?
*Insert Spiderman pointing meme
Guilty as charged
It’s not just a hobby but a lifestyle.
They sent a recruiter to my place of employment back when I was in retail. They asked me if I ever thought of joining the armed forces, and I gave them a polite but firm no.
So then they asked “are you happy with where your life is going?”, trying to take advantage of me being a teenager stuck in retail.
Even if they werent asking you to throw your life away in some oil war to protect corporate interests, even if they weren’t asking you to sell your morals away, they’re aggressive assholes. So fuck them they’re getting the treatment they deserve.
Had a recruiter stop by my desk about two years after I enlisted, and tried to pitch the navy to me.
I started laughing at him, then when he got all offended and mentioned me “working in a dead end job in the middle of nowhere” I shot back with “beats DYING in the middle of nowhere, where nobody above your CO will even bother reading the casualty report let alone care” , and that if the navy REALLY wanted me they should have returned my calls after I got a medical discharge for having emergency surgery in basic, then denying my reenlistment due to having a surgery in my adult life.
Of course at this point in my life, with the knowledge and ideals, I wouldn’t touch the MIC with a 899.16cm pole.
Thank you for your take.
Completely unrelated to what you said, I appreciate seeing so many star trek fans around here. It really makes lemmy feel like a home.
I’m a huge trek nerd so this place is basically like A Little Piece of Heaven.
I’m slowly getting my wife into it, but she’s still learning the basics so it’s great to have a place to read and discuss the finer points.
Like how much RICK FUCKING BERMAN sucks ass, and how Captain Jellico may be a good starfleet captain but he’s still an asshole and not a great enterprise captain
m a huge trek nerd so this place is basically like A Little Piece of Heaven.
That’s pretty much exactly how I feel about it top. It’s very refreshing.
m slowly getting my wife into it, but she’s still learning the basics so it’s great to have a place to read and discuss the finer points.
Same. We are currently wrapping up TNG season 1, but we are certainly getting through it, and she loves it enough to keep going which is great.
I usually keep the star trek conversations to my star trek account though.
Like how much RICK FUCKING BERMAN sucks ass, and how Captain Jellico may be a good starfleet captain but he’s still an asshole and not a great enterprise captain
I’ll admit I’m not as familiar with the background stuff like that, but pretty much everything I hear about Berman is not good.
Hey don’t be dismissive of the pole! I have you know that there is a MIl-STD for the pole and only 3 companies are authorized providers for the pole. Do you know how much testing went into that pole? Plus the colonial who headed up the pole project is now working for the approved vendor in umm management of quality.
My high school made us take the ASVAB. I ended up with an 88, and it took threats of harassment charges to stop all 3 major branches from just showing up at my house unannounced.
They also straight up lied when trying to get me to join the reserves, saying I’d never be called to active duty. But, they had already been calling reserves to active duty in Afghanistan/Iraq. Idk why they thought I’d be dumb enough to believe them, considering they wanted me because of my test score.
I got something stupid like a 96 on the ASVAB and I just told the first air force guy I smoked a lot of weed and I never heard from any military again lmao
It was tempting when they offered me to go right into a program to become a satellite operator starting off making $125k/year immediately after boot camp… but I don’t regret not taking that offer. Who knows what would have actually materialized, anyways. Probably would have been 6 years deep dreaming of hopefully seeing 6 figures one day while I end up managing logistics or something.
My highschool made us take it as well. My school also made us take the SAT or ACT for the required 0.5 career credit. I do not remeber the actual scores after all his time, just that it was at the maximum on a few.
I understand they tried calling on me for years but never tracked me down. I skipped my senior year of highschool and went to college. Between work, school, and coeds, I was rarely home for them to bother me.
That offer was a lie. They have no power to offer you a specific position.
It was the fact that you can sign up for years but not be guaranteed the job you signed up for that kept me from joining.
Idk why they thought I’d be dumb enough to believe them,
It’s literally their job to lie and there’s a good chance this is a lie they were successfully sold when they joined.
The US Military is basically just an MLM that ends with your kneecaps blown off in a friendly fire incident.
That’s what it became after the draft was abolished… for the time being, hopefully forever.
Imagine the power these people had before that legislative event. “You’ve been drafted. You will go to South Pacific/Korea/Vietnam or you will go to jail.”
It was a double-edged sword. Conscription was deeply radicalizing, both in terms of domestic discontent and labor militarization.
Once Nixon ended the draft and converted operations to air war/special forces, the domestic opposition to the wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia rapidly fizzled out. And by the 1980s, our War on
Poor PeopleCrime effectively put the kabash on the kind of neighborhood organizing/defense that kept communities from falling under aggressive police cartels.I think American politicians don’t really want conscription today any more than the people do.
“You’ve been drafted. You will go to South Pacific/Korea/Vietnam or you will go to jail.”
Jail has never sounded so good.
Idk why they thought I’d be dumb enough to believe them, considering they wanted me because of my test score.
I think therein lies your answer. Their own test scores were low enough to think you might eventually join.
What’s funny is they ignored all the people that scored 95+ on the ASVAB in my high school. They knew those kids were too smart to join the military.
My high school made us take the ASVAB too. I filled in bubbles at random and got a 72. I graduated in 2004, so yeah I had recruiters contact me all the time despite the fact that I had no interest in going to Iraq.
I VERY NEARLY joined the Army when in my early 20s. What stopped me were two things:
- You sign a contract that says you will do the job for a period but that they don’t guarantee that the job is available and they can put you in any job they want. I realized I could be peeling potatoes for years.
- I couldn’t believe what complete assholes the people in the recruiting center were. You want me to join you? How about being nice?
I ran the hell away from there having done everything except take an oath.
so for most enlisted folks, you have a choice of career paths: recruiting, or drill instructor. both are exceptionally stressful in different ways, but recruiting in this age has got to be the harder one. I’m not going to apologize for dickhead behavior and shitty recruiters, they are certainly out there, but for the most part I just feel bad because they will never meet their numbers in this economy and it often hurts their careers.
Seen many good marines not make it back from recruiting duty. Most people don’t sleep well at night after lying to a child.
yeah it fucks people up; and so does drill instructing - being on post at 3a to see make sure the recruits get to ranges by sunup, long long long hours that don’t give two fucks about your kid’s recital or timmy’s ball game… honestly rough work.
I always found it extremely fucked up that you’re allowed to do di duty with dependents. I don’t really mean the volunteers, they can do what they want. The voluntold with dependents are the ones I felt bad for.
Not to simp for the US military and dismiss the unnecessary lives lost, but I heard most people who join the military opt for non-combat support role. That way, they are physically and mentally safe but get the free education perk.
Depending on the environment, that may not mean shit. I killed it on the ASVAB and took a “hide out in my storage container and get a killer bonus” gig then immediately out of training got pulled for a team to “Road Trip Iraq” in a desperate bid for people to stop breaking million dollar systems.
Got taken out by an IED in less than 6 months and put out due to injuries. Bright side I’m chillin at 36 on a 100% disability payment and a sub $500 mortgage.
Former Navy here. You can opt for anything want but it doesn’t mean squat if they want to send you somewhere.
People just up and quit after years of being enlisted because the job hurts?
Slight understatement but the basic jist is there
Thanks.
I don’t feel bad if my local crack dealers don’t sell as much crack as they wanted to, I don’t feel bad if my local kidnappers fail to steal as many children as they’d hoped, and I don’t feel bad for the local military recruiters not making their recruitment numbers.
you do you man. most everyone I knew in the mil was there for school and vet benefits, not because we wanted to murder innocent people in far-off lands. looking at the hellscape out there, it’s not an incomprehensible choice for people with very limited options, aka, lack of trust funds.
Yes, that is the exact tool they use to get those people.
Make life as miserable, but allow the military to get all the benefits you should have been getting in the first place.
You want a good life, get a degree! Aww, can’t pay for school because we made it expensive? Now you will be forced to join or be bankrupt until your 50s! Tough choice
Good, you called out the military and I think you’re not the only one who did not fall for it. After all, the US military admit they are having recruitment crisis.
This was years ago, not the current recruitment crisis.
But either way, I’m glad the latest generation isn’t falling for it either.
Worse: it is apparently in great part due to family members telling those who are just graduating high school NOT to follow in their footsteps.
35k in 2022 is not a living wage.
It’s not the wage. It’s an enlistment bonus for shipping out to basic within a short time frame of enlisting. Meant to help fill vacancies in the Army.
Nobody wants to join the military because people are tired of going to fight strangers in foreign countries they have no beef with. We’re figuring out that our military is actually more of a terrorist organization with veto power in NATO.
Plus you know, people are worried about the impending climate crisis and the future water wars more than the geopolitical dick swinging the military is used to enforce.
plus all we ever hear about from vets is how this country refuses to take care of them… the abysmal state of veteran care in this country has broken the line in many traditionally long running military families. like, if big papa breadwinner of the traditional southern family comes back broken and unable to work that family just ends up on the street. that alone breaks that chain of what may have been 10 generations of military men. now think of every less extreme scenario and how common they are and how they affects the minds of those children that may have previously been gung-ho to sign up.
veterans these days have little pride over what they accomplished or failed to accomplish, the war stories are hard to make glorious sounding, they all have some severe medical issue caused by the military that the military refuses to acknowledge and/or help them with, so very many homeless veterans…
I’m not at all pro military, but even I can see how ridiculously fucked it is that a man can sign his life away to fight for a county and for that county to not even have the decency to pick him up out of the fucking dirt after…
veterans these days have little pride over what they accomplished or failed to accomplish, the war stories are hard to make glorious sounding, they all have some severe medical issue caused by the military that the military refuses to acknowledge and/or help them with, so very many homeless veterans…
I don’t disagree with your conclusion but fyi - korean vietnam and 80s conflicts vets very rarely have gung-ho battle glory stories to sell. they experienced as much trauma as iraq/afghanistan vets, there’s not a lot of glory to go around. the familial tradition of service is being broken, but the service is also trying to diversify and get away from being 80%+ legacy/ mil family tradition we had in the 90s.
i wasn’t trying to be exclusive to only the most recent conflicts. this is a thing that’s been developing and getting worse for a long time. i never thought anyone had any proud battle stories from those eras either. pretty much since wwii as far as i can tell…
Sure, was just mislead by:
veterans these days
yeah, that’s fair 😅 my phrasing could’ve been better. that was admittedly a bit of a quickdraw of a comment.
Meant to help fill vacancies in the Army.
I thought it was to help boost sales of Dodge vehicles
Same thing.
Not to mention clothing, housing, food are all taken care of too. Not to mention perks of military base discounts and programs.
Plus, you abandon all bodily autonomy and you might be wounded or killed.
And even if you’re not, the chances of PTSD are astronomical! Not to mention the likelihood of having to do something morally reprehensible.
hope you enjoyed music in your youth because the vast majority will come home with degrees of hearing loss, most of which the mil will assert happened away from service.
All bonuses in my book
you might be wounded or killed.
This is not unique to the military, a lot of jobs are dangerous.
Sure. I work from home, so my risk is slightly lower, though.
Harder to get PTSD at home.
I’d say that depends on how many calls you’re on every day
You don’t know my cat.
I have stubbed my toe on the way to my kitchen a time or two. Dangerous times to work from home, and watch our for Legos folks!
But that barely makes a difference, assuming you stay loyal to tradition and purchase a brand new Charger with 33% apy.
Oh I’m aware
It is when you are in the military and housing, food, and healthcare are paid for. At that point all you REALLY need the 35K for is to buy a V6 Camaro (or Mustang).
bah, someone hasn’t been on post in the last decade… it’s all about 'dem chargers now. fucking chargers, as far as the eye can see… oh look, there’s one getting repo’d now, to later be resold to some e3 on a ridiculous loan! the majesty of nature!
I remember my base tours where they desperately try to accentuate the “for sale” lot your fancy car will inevitably be on in 6 months, unsurprisingly it deterred approx nobody.
recruiters might be scummy, but the used car salespeople right off post - oof now that’s pure evil lol
That’s the sign on bonus. The salary is around $22,000 a year starting. Abysmal, but you don’t have to pay for much. Food, and housing and insurance is covered.
Army wouldn’t be my choice, but my best friend did his 20 and out in the air force and climbed high enough in the ranks that he was making six figures. He got to retire at 38 with free Healthcare the rest of his life and gets like $60k a year and got to go to a lot of cool places (as well as shit ones, of course). AF or coast guard be about the only ones I’d consider.
Guy I worked with retired from the Navy as a captain and got whatever very generous pay came with that. Then used his veterans preference to get a job in my agency, did that for 20+ years, retired as a gs 14 so he gets that annuity plus his TSP savings plus social security in a few years. He’s still barely 60, so he is working as a consultant. I’m guessing he’s pulling down $200k with all the various incomes and maybe working 20 hours a week, and he’s got the Healthcare and other benefits for life. People trash talk the military and government but if you work the system right it can be worthwhile. Hell, I wish I’d joined just so I could get USAA.
I knew a marine growing up. Fully into all things marine, vietname vet. Right around the time I turned 18 he told me to not go into the Marines, go into the Air Force, go into anything except the Marines.
Maybe he didn’t like me, but I don’t think that was the case.
The odds of you being comfortable go up, while odds of dying go down, in the AF.
Well private annual salary is actually $23,011 according to goarmy.com. Idk where the 35k is from, might include a signing bonus or something.
Army is currently doing $35k sign on bonus. Salary for bottom rank is like $22,500.
For the vast majority of those enlisting, I’d say the 35k must go towards a down payment on a 4wd, lifted truck (with balls hanging off the back).
There are so many predatory car dealers around every American base. All the sign say will finance E1 and up. (E1 is the lowest enlisted rank) They know once they get them to sign if the teenager tries to default they can contact their command and put a lien on their pay.
That was like twice my wage in 2022 lol.
In a lot of places, yes it definitely is. With 2.5k a month I have a lot of money leftover.
$18.50 is all they can offer? They can indeed fuck right on off. In this economy?
18.50? Not even close. You’re working way more than 40 hours a week!
Yeah you’re not clocking out and getting stoned/drunk watching old Cartoon Network shows if you work for the military.
Once you sign, you’re living that life for a chunk of years.
And if you really fuck up, military courts are brutal compared to civilian court.
You’re on the clock 23 hours and 59 minutes of the day. That hourly rate is MUCH lower.
That’s not even minimum wage in Seattle.
Thank you for your service Duck Chad 🫡
Oh shit I didn’t even know there was a salute emoji. TIL 🫡
Funny how it looks like a teeny peeny with a swollen sack.
I am learning so much today!
Learning is burning.
Uh. Wait.
Learning is…
Er… gurning?
Don’t 🦆 join 🦆 the 🦆 armed 🦆 forces 🦆
“Hey duck sign guy, you want a $10k signing bonus so you can be right back here in five years minus working legs?”
Alternative storyline:
be sign spinner
Hate your Job
Sign up for military
Get assigned to color guard
Military sign spinner
The band only plays Entry of the Gladiators to rub it in. Because you are a clown.
Ouch! 🔥
“We know 35k won’t get you far, but PTSD is forever. Imagine blowing your brains off because you can’t sleep at night!”
This right here is my experience, don’t recommend.
Does Marijuana or psychedelics help with healing this kind of trauma?
No amount of weed can cure a hole in the head
I’m sure it can’t. Only some people ever heal, but few reach incredible levels of happiness.
This applies for everybody, no matter what profession they chose.
Now imagine putting an additional handicap on top by putting yourself in a combat situation, its’ physical and emotional aftermath.This goes for soldiers as well as all civilians caught in the crossfire and finding themselves being used as pawns and targets in a cruel game, as is happening currently in Ukraine and Palestine, as it happened in Syria and its’ city of Aleppo in 2016. And most recently for the American Armed Forces, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The act of being coerced and lied to, or just plain shoved into situations of extreme violence, regarded as little more than meatbags by a powerful, greedy and blunt hand hovering behind it all.
The experience of having to go through something like that, to have been regarded and targeted, then “processed” in such a manner, it has to create a hole in the psyche, make one question one’s self worth.
I’m reminded of when the russian invaders in Ukraine put up billboards with photos and names of their own soldiers who refused to follow orders to participate in the invasion. Who knows what their fate was, what other extreme bullying techniques, including brutality, they might have used to try and force their meatbags to pick up their rifle and march towards the combat area.
They didn’t engage with the defenders, but they lived through the hell of war and will carry wounds that will not heal, even supposing they found their way home.Once coerced, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
No
The people have spoken and the military listened - they lowered enlistment standards. Lol.
Hate your shitty life brought to you by the system?
Come kill people for the system!
Ducks don’t kill people.
Well, they do but only for fun.
The main difference between ducks and the military:
Ducks are prolific rapists.
Wait…
So much so that ducks have developed evolutionary defenses.
For example, do you know why ducks have tail feathers?
To cover their butt quacks!
Depending on where this was and how long ago, this is pretty close to minimum wage in some us states. If they get paid as much to wear a duck costume, at no risk except their pride, why wouldn’t they?
I think it’s a 35k signing bonus on top of the shitty military pay.
But there are benefits to military beyond pay. The free housing and Healthcare alone are worth more than a private’s wages. Enough expenses are covered that 25k a year is actually pretty good for a single person with no education or experience. The retirement benefits and free college education are also very attractive. You have people retiring in their 30s and 40s making good money on top of whatever field they decide to pursue post-military.
I’m no supporter of the MIC, but joining the military can be a good economic and career decision for someone fresh out of high school without any direction.
Yes, free healthcare, GI Bill, free housing, retirement, there are definitely negative things, but there are a lot of upsides, even just doing it for one enlistment can be very beneficial
Well, it’s 35k period. Plus the pay from the job, which is usually just straight up work experience in a field like hvac repair (for example).
Let’s be clear, joining the military is not a bad deal monetarily. They will take care of you as far as your career is concerned.
While I was not one of those guys, there were a couple in my cohort who lived in the barracks, ate in the mess hall, didn’t buy stereo systems on credit with 30% interest rates, and (most of all) didn’t hang out in strip clubs every weekend. These guys ETSed after 3 years with a couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank.
The issue for most service persons is that there are sophisticated, established industries located mere miles off-base whose sole purpose is to seperate soldiers from their money. They’re exceptionally good at it. Like, honestly terrifyingly good at it. Not like it’s hard; most of these kids have zero experience managing money, are chronically horny, and desperate for any diversion from their jobs. Regardless, most who leave after short terms leave broke.
Like you say, with a little self control, it can be a pretty good deal. It’s not just the salary; you get free room & board, if you want it, and that’s a huge benefit.
But what about the adventure, the comradeship and the pride you’ll experience at the army? /s
in the summer of 2022
That’s 36 degrees celsius
I prefer proper units… 309K
Lemonade is all we’ve ever sold.
they’ll bring back slave armies before they let the lack of volunteers actually hamper their efforts to use the military to establish american global dominion
