As we search for paths out of America’s economic crisis, many suggest business as a paradigm for cutting costs....Max Boot writes the only possible rejoinder:
The military is innately hierarchical, yet it nurtures a camaraderie in part because the military looks after its employees. This is a rare enclave of single-payer universal health care, and it continues with a veterans’ health care system that has much lower costs than the American system as a whole.
Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the American military isn’t its aircraft carriers, stunning as they are. Rather, it’s the military day care system for working parents.
While one of America’s greatest failings is underinvestment in early childhood education (which seems to be one of the best ways to break cycles of poverty from replicating), the military manages to provide superb child care. The cost depends on family income and starts at $44 per week.
“I absolutely think it’s a model,” said Linda K. Smith, executive director of the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, which advocates for better child care in America. Ms. Smith, who used to oversee the military day care system before she retired from the Defense Department, said that the military sees child care as a strategic necessity to maintain military readiness and to retain highly trained officers.
Good idea. And while we’re at it, why don’t we mandate that all Americans have to accept orders from a government employee who will tell them when they can go to work, what jobs they will perform, when they can exercise, when they can go to sleep, where they can live, what they can wear, where they can travel, etc?Which I think is pretty much the model we're moving towards. A liberal is just one who plans to BE the government employee who tells you what to do.
The slight problem with this benign police state model of democracy is that even that doesn't work.
Sure, the military’s Tricare medical benefits for retirees are so costly as to be “unsustainable,” in the words of Defense Secretary Bob Gates. But no doubt Kristof can perform some budget legerdemain that can make a far larger version of single-payer cost-effective for the entire country. And while we’re at it, why don’t we offer everyone government-subsidized groceries just like at military PXs?Here's the conclusion:
Some unkind critics might suggest Kristof is making the same kind of arguments Hitler and Mussolini once made. They too were inspired by the military model and wanted to apply it across society writ large. But that would be to miss the larger point: Kristof is only joking. Right?We're the fascists, remember.
