Military-Civilian Gap

[Last hard class]

Pew Research Survey


http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/...-post-911-era/



LHC

[Dozer523]

AMAZING!

"Only about one half of one percent of the U.S. population has been on active military duty at any given time during the past decade of sustained warfare"

[CloseDanger]

This article is not statistical, yet it speaks about the divide between Military and Civilian. It hit home with me. From Politics Daily...

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by Dozer523

AMAZING!

"Only about one half of one percent of the U.S. population has been on active military duty at any given time during the past decade of sustained warfare"

That is staggering. Assuming they're just running the math w/o discriminating among "service-eligible" folks, compare with 12.5% for the World War II years. That's alot of load without alot of load distribution.

[1stindoor]

Originally Posted by Badger52

That is staggering. Assuming they're just running the math w/o discriminating among "service-eligible" folks, compare with 12.5% for the World War II years. That's alot of load without alot of load distribution.

That's the key take away, compared with WW II where there was a draft. Nowadays for every 10 hopefuls that walk into a recruiters office...there's probably only 3-5 that are actually eligible...and two of them will probably need a waiver for something.

[Buffalobob]

In the PBS News Hour they interview U of Md students on the report. The vet in the yellow shirt is in my daughter's GIS computer science class.

Chapter 4

http://video.pbs.org/video/2149213932

[Intel Cop]

On its face, the numbers seem disheartening in terms of the service mindset of today's young people, but consider the population during WWII (approx 137 mil) compared to today, and then the fact that WWII required 10+ million soldiers/sailors/marines to fight, while the current wars have required much lower numbers. The higher number of men required to fight WWII, coupled with a much lower population, explains why a higher percentage of the population served. Even if we had a draft now, the percentage would still be lower than 12%. It would require roughly 40 million veterans to meet that number now.