You're Welcome

If after paying for your home and utilities, your food, and your family's medical care, you were left with $17,000 for the year, could you eke out an existence on that? (Think about your own earnings after those expenses...)

That's the worst-case scenario for a brand-new military member, an E1 - assuming they received no bonus for enlisting in the first place. Then again, promotion to E2 comes before that first year is up, so after a few months they'll actually be making close to 19k a year. By the time they're an E4 with a couple years in, base pay is up to 23-24k. Achieve NCO status and you're close to 30k - in addition to your housing, food, medical care, and any special allowances or bonuses. Not bad for a high school graduate with no additional training or experience, says I. (Official military base pay table here.)

Still, you'll often see horror stories citing that 17 thousand/year base pay as if that was all she wrote. But military pay is most likely different than yours, as about.com attempts to explain here:

It's really impossible to produce an actual annual salary chart. This is because there are many variables to military pay.

Some jobs are entitled to flight pay, continuation bonuses and special pay, and some jobs are not. Some people live in free on-base government quarters (barracks or base housing) and others live off-base and receive a housing allowance. The amount of the housing allowance depends on the person's location, and whether or not they have dependents.

The below chart shows average annual military salary for enlisted members, to include base pay, average housing allowance, monetary food allowance, and the "tax advantage" of untaxed allowances. The charts do not include items such as overseas housing allowance, overseas COLA (cost of living allowance), enlistment or reenlistment bonuses, or other bonuses and allowances that many servicemembers are entitled to.

They show E1 earnings at 35k, and E5 at 50+. And regardless of any other bonuses, they all get free health care for themselves and their families.

Now given the job they do - risking life to keep America safe - I also say they aren't getting paid enough (even with an extra 8k or so for a year's duty in a combat zone). And if you or anyone else wants to pick up the tab for a GI the next time you see one at lunch somewhere that's a great way to say thanks. Likewise, if you're the sort that sends care packages to the troops overseas I can assure you from personal experience they are appreciated. I never received one that didn't contain things I couldn't have bought for myself - but that's not the effing point. The knowledge that folks back home who didn't even know me actually gave a damn was priceless.

That said, this annoys me (to put it kindly) - and if you can't see the difference then I'm wasting my breath:

WASHINGTON, DC - On Thursday, June 25th, the President and First Lady will join hundreds of Congressional family members and five national nonprofit organizations to prepare 15,000 backpacks with books, healthy snacks, Frisbees and other items for the children of servicemen and women. The service event is part of United We Serve, President Obama's call to all Americans to engage in service projects and create meaningful impact in their towns and communities. The United We Serve summer service initiative began June 22nd and runs through the National Day of Service and Remembrance on September 11th. The initiative is being led by the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency dedicated to fostering service in communities across the country.

And frankly, the fact that a military installation is being used as a backdrop for the charade adds fuel to the fire.

I think there are plenty of ways to say thanks for your service. I've taken advantage of free days at amusement parks for military members and families, I'm aware of summer camps set up for kids of deployed parents - awesome idea.

But healthy snacks? Frisbees? Really? I think charity is a great idea - if there are malnourished kids somewhere whose parents can't afford to give them healthy snacks then I salute the efforts of any charity to right that wrong. I'm not even opposed to Government aid to that end. But if those kids are the children of military members, it's for individual reasons beyond mom and dad don't get paid enough to buy them food.

The children of military members sacrifice for their country too, and they don't get a vote on that in more ways than one. So if you want to thank those kids for their sacrifice I think it's a great thing. They deserve it - in fact, you can't thank them enough. (But that shouldn't stop anyone from giving them a gift certificate for an ice cream cone or a free movie. Like me in Iraq they'll appreciate that.)

But I'm more than a little annoyed when I see military members treated as poverty stricken charity cases, which I think is the not-too-subtle message being sent here. And it seems to be part of a larger military member as helpless victim signal that increasingly seems to emanate from the home of the Commander in Chief. I suppose there's a fine line between thanking someone and insulting someone, and it's individually defined. But in this case I believe it's been crossed.

So I hope none of the folks involved aren't offended if I don't thank them.

(But thank you for reading.)

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