Word: friedmanly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...economist's case is presented by Milton Friedman, professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He argues that it would cost the government about $5 billion annually to make military salaries. Friedman claims that we are "taxing" young men in the army by paying them less than what they could earn on the open market. If these "taxes," he continues, are added to the present military budget, it will actually be cheaper to pay for a volunteer army. The obvious and over-riding advantage of such an army is that the amount of coersion in society is reduced...
...Friedman maintains that a volunteer army could be smaller than the present army because the reenlistment rate would be higher and so fewer men would be needed to train new inductees. Better pay during a volunteer's career might lessen the political appeal of veterans benefits which now amount to some billion dollars a year...
...from the present system to a volunteer army Friedman would use a "transitional draft." He calls for reduced physical and mental qualifications for volunteers and offers them rehabilitation; volunteers might even receive higher salaries than draftees. Civilians would still be available for the draft, but only from the ages of 18 1/2 to 20 1/2. (Today a man can be drafted anytime between the ages of 18 and 26. The theory behind the present system according to the Selective Service, is that the threat of eight years of vulnerability goads a man into volunteering.) Under the "transitional draft," deferments...
Opponents of the plan protest, first of all, that a volunteer army would cost not $5 billion but $17 billion. The latter figure is derived from the same data as Friedman's, but as one Defense Department official points out, "econometrics is an art not a science. No one really knows how to handle the data for such a long-range estimate." To this Friedman replies that the surest way of seeing who is right is to raise salaries and watch the enlistment rate. If the number of volunteers increases with salary, keep raising the salary until the draft...
According to Friedman, it would take from $4 to $6 billion to attract enough men into the service to end the draft. A Defense Department official, who argued that "econometrics is still an art, not a science," painted a picture of the voluntary army that would cost $17 billion a year...