Regarding your post 48, you can be assured that the upper class and wealthy, and, I might add, the educated, do not join anymore and the military services are poorer for it.
From what I can tell, the military services are chuck full of high school graduates and the very young (18-20 or so), and the very few college graduates in the officer corps.
Not a very good sample of the American public, is it? And that is exactly my point.
From what I can tell, the military services are chuck full of high school graduates and the very young (18-20 or so), and the very few college graduates in the officer corps.
There is, however, real statistical data that refutes "what you can tell".
The demographics of the Army closely parallel the demographics of the country at large -- by race, education, income level, etc.
People like Cong. Charles Rangel -- who's been pushing for a draft -- are responsible for the notion that the demographics of the armed services are skewed toward the poor and uneducated. But...it's...just...not...true.
I lost a hard drive recently or I would have a lot of sources for you, but this Heritage report for example, gives you an idea that our military is a sort of elite compared to the general population, only about 13 to 20% of the age group are even qualified for military service.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/08/who-serves-in-the-us-military-the-demographics-of-enlisted-troops-and-officers
“Based on an understanding of the limitations of any objective definition of quality, this report compares military volunteers to the civilian population on four demographic characteristics: household income, education level, racial and ethnic background, and regional origin. This report finds that:
U.S. military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officerswho do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Previous Heritage Foundation research demonstrated that the quality of enlisted troops has increased since the start of the Iraq war. This report demonstrates that the same is true of the officer corps.
Members of the all-volunteer military are significantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 percent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods-a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.
American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted personnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18-24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor’s degree.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service. Enlisted troops are somewhat more likely to be white or black than their non-military peers. Whites are proportionately represented in the officer corps, and blacks are overrepresented, but their rate of overrepresentation has declined each year from 2004 to 2007. New recruits are also disproportionately likely to come from the South, which is in line with the history of Southern military tradition.
The facts do not support the belief that many American soldiers volunteer because society offers them few other opportunities. The average enlisted person or officer could have had lucrative career opportunities in the private sector. Those who argue that American soldiers risk their lives because they have no other opportunities belittle the personal sacrifices of those who serve out of love for their country.”