Reply #57: Doing what? You're going to put people who used their brains in their jobs

[MADem]

to work doing manual labor on make-work projects? I rather think the UNIONS that do those jobs for a living would take issue with your plan to shove them off the gravy train. They wouldn't put up with it, either--it's a pipe dream. If there's any big public works projects to be done, the International Brotherhood of Electricians, Pipe Fitters, etc., etc., will be first in line--not unemployed soldiers. And those guys have lobbyists to make sure it goes down that way. The military doesn't.

If you're actually thinking President Obama is going to go to that sort of FDR thing, where the government is overseeing big projects and playing Benevolent Big Brother, employment will likely have to hit twenty five percent before he even thinks about it. The paradigm now is to throw money at the private sector. And I don't think he's demobbing the Army in any event--he's sending them to Afghanistan, where they'll populate soon-to-be-built FOBs.

The GI bill, even with the recent fixes that improved it, won't pay for all your college expenses. And how are people expected to feed their families while they're going to school?

Service personnel are people, too. They have homes, spouses, kids. They aren't borg to be sent off into the woods to cut down trees and live in a bunkhouse, or work on a chain gang fixing roads.