National Service is bad for you

[BBKing]

I like reading economist's blogs, as they satisfy my primeval urge for hard facts and real world situations (and maths, of course, which is my original love). Here's a good one:

Paolo Buonanno estimates (pdf) that UK national service reduced men's earnings by 4-7% a year; he established this by comparing men just young enough to have escaped national service when it was abolished in 1960 with men who were just old enough to have served.
Most of the lost earnings are because men who did national service got less work experience.
This matters today. Some half-wits want to introduce compulsory national community service. If history's any guide, this will prove far more expensive that it looks.

http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad....me_in_los.html

[TheNorm]

Perhaps our "modern" armed forces should ensure that their "employees" are trained not just for warfare but for the real world, too? Or is that asking too much?

[Maggy J]

With all due respect why should our armed forces be the one's to sort out the countries mess in dealing with disaffected teens?Also who wants to get some oik trained up to the stage where they might actually be useful only to lose them back to civvy street two years later?

If we want highly trained,intellegent and dedicated armed sevice personel then we must continue with using only willing volunteers.

However if we put them into a dedicated service of community service then I'm quite happy to consider that as an option.

[RUSTY]

Paolo Buonanno?it may depend on the mob you got placed in,i was lucky asked for the royal engineers and as had just finished my apprenticship it was ok. lost out on trade pay for two years (£14 a week, 50 hrs) but gained loads of experience. year in uk, year in germany hated some of it, but lots of ok.loads of lads in given a choice by the courts of borstal or three years in the army.

[foreverwar]

Do we really want a two-tier armed forces?

When I joined up, there was six weeks basic training, six month trade training, and then three months specialist training - that took almost a year with annual leave taken into consideration. Doesn't leave much time/payback if they are in for two years.

So do we just make them trade-less general dogsbodies who would be looked down on by the regulars, and what actual benefit would anyone get out of this?

[TheDaddy]

I have a feeling that a lot of our disenfranchised youths would benefit from the discipline, sense of purpose and belonging that the army would give them, sadly for to many of them it would be the first time they had felt such emotions in their entire lives and whilst the army might only want highly skilled, enthusiastic people, perhaps they should be reminded what defended the Empire for years, it wasn't the people they want now but as Wellington described them 'the scum of the earth'.

[Wicked_and_Crazy]

What a load of old rubbish.

Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that when national serivce was abolished there would be two feeds of people into the laobur market, those coming out of national service and those that no longer had to do it. This would have carried on until the people on compulsary national service were released into the labour market and as a result there would have been an imbalance in the jobs available and the number of people entering the labour market which must likely caused a suppression pay levels.