That “Poverty Draft” thing
Matthis and Adam Kokesh, along with Iraq Veterans Against the War Executive Director Jose Vasquez, encouraged by Charlie Rangel and his push for a draft, are all fond of calling the all-volunteer military fighting our wars in the Middle East a “poverty draft” military, meaning that we recruit from the nation’s ghettos for the cannon fodder we send to war. Ann Marlowe, in the Wall Street Journal writes about a Heritage Foundation study which lays that canard to rest;
Indeed, the Heritage report showed that “low-income families are underrepresented in the military and high-income families are overrepresented. Individuals from the bottom household income quintile make up 20.0 percent of Americans who are age 18-24 years old but only 10.6 percent of the 2006 recruits and 10.7 percent of the 2007 recruits. Individuals in the top two quintiles make up 40.0 percent of the population, but 49.3 percent of the recruits in both years.”
What about the charge that our Army is disproportionately black? This too is false, as is clear from data for fiscal 2010 available on the Army’s website: Whereas blacks comprise 17% of Americans ages 18-39 with high school degrees, they represent only a slightly larger proportion of enlisted soldiers, at 21%.
But we all knew that, didn’t we?
Marlowe concludes;
The myth of the ghetto Army is as nastily racist as it is false.
You should read the whole opinion piece.
Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Having been a former recruiter, I can tell you from personal experience the lower income areas are not only have a lower propensity to enlist, the percentage of those who even qualify in the first place is lower than other areas for every imaginable reason.
It never ceased to amaze me that schools with above-average academic achievement in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods were more receptive to recruiters than schools where less than one percent of the student body scored above the national average on the SAT/ACT (which the Educational Specialist kept as part of STEAM data.)
I read an article the other day (and unfortunately failed to capture the link) that described how the anti-war factions are pushing to drastically reduce military pay and benefits, not for fiscal reasons, but for the purpose of reducing the number of volunteers in the military, and therefore require the reinstatement of the draft.
That would then create an armed service that fits the “poverty draft” model that the left fantasizes about.
Personally, I would rather fight alongside someone who can read/write/comprehend English at a 10th grade level rather than Snuffy McDubdass who couldn’t even qualify for a job at McDonalds.
Oh, I just love that meme. Poverty draft, my ass. The problem with the lower income side of enlistees is that they haven’t learned how to work hard for something they want. That is why they don’t get up and enlist. It would not necessarily occur to them to head out to a recruiter’s office and do so.
That study is not used enough because for the left, it destroys what they want people to believe.
I am sure that now that WSJ has chimed in on this older-than-dirt fiction, that the knuckleheads will clam up. Right, like facts matter to these creatures. Good people spent much time discrediting the same sort of crapola regarding Viet Nam servicemen. Doesn’t matter. Truth, as they say, is the first victim in war. I used to think that meant only a bloody war. I think differently now.
You can always depend on Heritage! Great organization.
Wait a minute; hasn’t the meme always been that the “rich” kids didn’t get drafted? So, if that were true (I suspect it’s not and is only used as a protest talking point) then it wouldn’t matter if there were a draft, anyway.
There’s no such thing as a poverty draft?!? Next I suppose you’ll be telling me the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes…!
Can’t find the reference now, but I have read that when C. Rangel was pushing for a draft, someone ran the numbers an found no one in the Army from the zip codes he represents.
It’s a “poverty draft,” so that means poor folks are getting a job. That one of our current administration’s talking points. Creating jobs.
Sheeesh. Can’t please some people if you hung ’em with a new rope…
/sarc off
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