From: "Salil Tripathi" <salil61-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: "We had a great day. We killed a lot of people."
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 08:56:37 +0000


Mary,

The current starting salary for a soldier in the US army (E1 rank) is $1150 
per month (and is to be increased next year by the largest percentage since 
1981). This does not include housing and other benefits 9if the soldier has 
dependents) which add some $400-500 per month. The current US minimum wage 
is I believe $5.50 an hour. That works out to, approximately, $950 a month, 
but from which the worker will have to pay for his/her housing and other 
expenses. And living on that sort of wage is difficult (cf. Nickle-and-Dimed 
in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich), just as living on a soldier's wage is 
difficult.

I'm neither supporting the US Army's wage structure, nor am I saying that 
the soldiers should be paid more. My point is that the average raw recruit 
is financially slightly better off than the average worker starting out with 
McDonald's. Whether the risks s/he takes are worth more money or not is a 
policy choice for the US to make; and whether the incentive structure is 
geared to make those risks worthwhile is a matter of economics and 
individual certainty-equivalents and indifference curves.

Salil


>From: AnnasMF-AT-aol.com
>Reply-To: postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: "We had a great day.  We killed a lot of people."
>Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 23:22:32 EST
>
>No, they need to have their minds changed by a country that offers them 
>jobs
>and training in something more promising than becoming killers for minimum
>wage. mary


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