Reply #98: The birth rate is 1.4% (14/1000) in the US. [View All]

[TahitiNut]

Assuming that 1.3% of the population reaches the age of 18 each year, with a population of about 300 million, that's 3.9 million people reaching service age annually. I'm guessing the 1.7 million figure is male-only. The CIA World Factbook places the number of people reaching the age of military service annually at 2,143,873 males and 2,036,201 females, for a total of about 4.2 million. So, the "ballpark" is around 4 million. Assuming a 2-year service obligation, that amounts to a total population in national service of around 8 million ... or about 5% of the workforce (about the same size as the number of unemployed!!).

For comparison, we currently have around 1.6-1.7 million active duty military service personnel. I don't see that we'd be increasing this under a national service obligation unless the public really supported such an increase. "Skin in the game" makes a big difference. About 20-25% of the military would be composed of those choosing to make it a career or at least extending their service voluntarily (NO STOP-LOSS unless there was a declared war and Congressional enactlemtn of stop-loss). About 75-80% of the military would be in E-1 to E-5 or O-1 to O-3 grades/ranks - about the same as currently.

Deploying people in a variety of roles, including public health service, VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America), the Peace Corps, a revival of the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), other roles, and military service ... including training and experience in those roles ... can only be of benefit to the nation (which is, after all, all of us).

I call it Participatory Democracy ... the only "flavor" of real democracy there is, imho.