Re:U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with ...
by loeg on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @04:37PM
(#23251471)
I think I agree with you about everything you've mentioned, except that I continue to believe post-tax real income is a better frame of comparison than comparing post-tax (and missing BAH and hazard pay) to pre-tax.
(Additionally, it is not clear to me that GP's example numbers for private contractors were actually modal, or just some high numbers he heard about.)
$20k/month is a quarter mil a year. Worst case, you live in a high tax state, you might pay $100k in total tax, state + federal + local.
That leaves a take-home of $140k/year. Still almost 3x as much as a soldier making $50k/year.
The larger point is that, yet again, we have a govt bureaucracy handling a budget in hamfisted ways. (Big rigid hierarchy >> underpay recruits >> wow, the org is bloated and still expensive >> we can save money by hiring contractors.) The bureaucracy is is callous to the incentives they're creating.
If it's a much better deal to be a private military contractor vs a soldier, what does that do for morale? For cohesion? For career trajectories? (Get trained, quit asap to go private with a big pay bump...)
This general pattern has a deep historical roots. Many countries at various points in history have hollowed out their formal military by shifting to hired mercenaries. That pattern has a bad track record.