Middle-Class Warfare, or Support Our Semi-Fortunate Sons and Daughters

A new study from the Heritage Foundation confounds some conventional wisdom: It turns out it's the middle class, not the poor, that provides the bulk of America's military recruits. Sez the Washington Times:

The Heritage report states that median household income for all enlisted recruits in 1999 was $41,141, compared with the national median of $41,994. By 2003, the recruit household income reached $42,822, when adjusted for inflation.

"In other words, on average, recruits in 2003 were from wealthier neighborhoods than were recruits in 1999," said the report, titled, "Who Bears the Burden? Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Recruits Before and After 9/11."

The report, which you can read in its entirety here, sets the goal of proving that the middle class has upped its contribution of bodies since 9/11. (You may stumble on phrases like "Overall, the income distribution of military enlistees is more similar to than different from the income distribution of the general population," which is like saying "He's like any other man, only more so.")

I think author Tim Kane's focus on post-9/11 recruiting misses a more important point—that beliefs about military recruiting are one of the last bastions of Marxist thinking in America. I say Marxist descriptively rather than pejoratively. The idea that military recruiting is a phenomenon of class exploitation, with poor kids joining up because they have no other opportunities, is truly widespread. People on the left and the right both buy into it to some degree. It's also clearly untrue—no matter where you stand on the economic ladder, the military is never your best financial bet. The lowliest no-skills service job will get you more money with a lot less effort than the armed services. People enlist for reasons you may or may not find rational, but nobody is driven to the service by financial necessity.

The idea continues to thrive, though. Look what The Washington Post did with what is apparently the same set of data Heritage was using: Bearing the subtitle "Recruits' Job Worries Outweigh War Fears," Ann Scott Tyson's article is a Born In the USA buffaloscape of "shuttered textile mills" where "jobs in the local economy are scarce as NASCAR fans are plentiful." (By the way, when are "shuttered" factories going to die out as a descriptor of heartland communities? It's like calling Chicago a city of abandoned teepees on the once-thriving French and Indian fur trade route.)