This piece endorsing conscription is terribly weak.
Editor, Discourse
Editor:
Michael Ard’s case for military conscription rests heavily on a fatal economic error – namely, his claim that conscription would lower the cost of manning America’s military (“Is It Time To Reconsider the Draft?” Dec. 6). Conscription would, without doubt, raise that cost.
With an all-volunteer force, the cost of the military is explicit; it’s reflected in the budget numbers because the government must fully compensate each enlistee for his or her time and effort. With conscription, in contrast, the cost of the military is hidden. Because the government doesn’t have to fully compensate each enlistee for his or her time and effort, many draftees are paid less in the military than they would earn in the private sector.
A draftee who would earn, say, $100,000 annually by working as a plumber but who is paid, say, $20,000 annually for his or her military service, is someone who is taxed at least $80,000 annually to help fund the military. The fact that this tax doesn’t show up in budget numbers doesn’t make it less of a tax. It’s just a tax that is not only camouflaged but grotesquely unfair: by forcing this draftee to pay a tax of at least $80,000 annually enables non-conscripted citizens to enjoy lower tax burdens.
Moreover, because the value to the country of this draftee’s military service is less than $100,000 annually, conscription – by shifting this person from producing at least $100,000 of output in the private sector to producing some amount less in the military – lowers the net value of economic output and, thus, raises the full economic cost of the military higher than it would be absent conscription.
Mr. Ard might try to refute my argument by saying that the value to the country of this draftee’s military service is greater than $100,000 – to which I would reply, then let the citizens, through their representatives, prove it by offering to pay this person something more than $100,000 to entice him or her voluntarily into the military. If Americans taxpayers aren’t willing to pay fully for each military member’s service, economics screams that it’s wasteful – and ethics screams that it’s unjust – to unload on young men and women a disproportionately large chunk of this cost by threatening to cage them if they refuse to ‘serve.’
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
