Bro, your job sucks.

lol @ the military and police saving lives. We're talking about the military that drops bombs and the police that do home invasions right?

I realize that this doesn't mean a whole lot, compared to what is asked of them, but remember that military personnel have their living expenses paid. My uncle, who retired a colonel, lived like a king with his family in Belgium when working with NATO.

Fair enough. To compensate teachers we'll put them on military style housing (which blows, I lived in them), they can go to their military healthcare provider (which blows), spend a year away from their family (which blows) in a hell hole (which most bases are at anyways, and blows), put them through SERE (which I'm sure blows) for an extra $50 a month. Oh yeah, we'll shoot at them too (which blows). After that, teachers can get their pimped out Nissan 350z with its nice Pep-Boys rims.

Kaneman:
Seriously? Did the Air Force bomb your neighbor on accident and did the police raid your house thinking you had blow in there or something?

We make good money, and the pay scales are similar. What they get in the form of perks and rebates, we get in terms of allowances.

Their generals HAVE to make more than that. Our commanding officers onboard the ships (3 ringers) make about 170-200k.

Damn fine statements!

I know several folks of the "I'm too good for that job so I refuse to do anything" ilk and even after unemployment ran out they depend on other people to bail them out b/c they are too damn lazy to do something "beneath" them. When you paint houses for a living or do handy man work and have zero education, I'm thinking the dollar tree would look pretty good when you arent bringing in ANY money to support your family. But wait, you can call your 80 year old parents who are retired and living on SS and what they set aside and get them to help you out when you blow all your wife's paycheck on cigs and beer.

I work in public utilities and I get calls all the time about folks not wanting to pay their bill b/c their "check" hasn't come in yet, even tho they got it at the beginning of the month when bills were due and blew it on other things than paying for water and power.

I have no pity. Turn off your cable TV, your cell phone and that internet service and take care of the important things, like rent and utilities.

AMEN!! Being a military dependent AND a local govt worker, I dont want to hear shit about how bad teachers have it. My insurance sucks, I cant even get in to see a Dr. without having it scheduled more than a month out, if we lived on base, even as nice as they are it would still suck IF we could even get on the list to GET housing, and my paycheck working for a govt entity is shit. I was also told a few months ago that unless it's life or death, we arent supposed to EVER go to the ER and if we do and they decide it was unneccessary, they wont pay. How's that for all those awesome military benefits?

Lets also consider that if Obama and his successors dont turn things around, my husband wont have a retirement in 10 years when he's done his 20 or more...nor will any of the other military members who put their lives on the line on foreign countries because America wont pull back and take care of home first!

The military employs 1.43 MILLON active service personnal and another 848,000 reservists and you wonder why your pay sucks? Does this country need 2 million people for defense when we have weapons to blow the world up 33 times over? Let me answer that for you...no. So....we HAVE to start unending wars in order to fund and keep all these people doing something, even if that something means doing nothing. You simply cannot pay 1.43 million people 100 grand a year plus good healthcare and good retirement ON TOP OF spending billions upon billions in weaponry.

If all that you have is weapons to "blow the world up 33 times over", then all that you can do is either blow the world up, or nothing. Not a very effective method of defence.

I'm normally quiet for these types of discussions but this is just a plain narrow view on things. Those folks employed by our armed forces are a million times more important to defense than a million nuclear weapons or other means of "blowing up the world"

Defensive moves (and ultimately, entire wars) are accomplished at the micro level combining up to the macro level.

Decrease personnel levels and keep massive weapons and you just end up with another version of the Cold War. No thanks.

Now, if you're talking about narrowing that focus and removing the people just along for the pay-ride while not really accomplishing anything other than taking up space and replacing them with personnel that will actually work, then sure, that makes more sense. You'll spend more trying to figure out who is just taking up space, however...

Thanks, particle. I agree. Also, I'd like to point out that of the 1.43 million people the military employs, a very small percentage of them make 100grand. The vast majority who stay past 4 years are in the middle ranks of enlisted, earning more like 35-45k, if that. A lot of the military are enlisted in their first 4 years, so they're earning more like 20k.

I think 101 was saying we can't increase military pay significantly (the mythical hundred grand) as many people would like because with the number of people in the military it would just be too expensive.