Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I hope that we finally recognize that we can't fight an endless string of foreign wars with the Praetorian Guard. If we won't restart the draft, and make all Americans responsible for fighting the wars we choose to fight, then we will break the military and create a permanent class of disabled warriors we refuse to fully embrace. We're nearing that point already.

Bring back the draft and vastly expand the age range of eligibility for volunteers. As it stands, in most cases a volunteer will not be accepted past age 28 unless they have prior service. That needs to change.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I hope that we finally recognize that we can't fight an endless string of foreign wars with the Praetorian Guard. If we won't restart the draft, and make all Americans responsible for fighting the wars we choose to fight, then we will break the military and create a permanent class of disabled warriors we refuse to fully embrace. We're nearing that point already.

I doubt the draft will return; we'd rather wage war on the cheap and make it a distant video game. We can't resist putting our war toys to good use in order to insist on having our way in the world.

Ironically, we have a greater chance of fighting a highly labor-intensive conventional war if Hillary wins in 2016; for in that case, wealth can be "redistributed" on a grand scale, as it was during World War II. Indeed, a seemingly bizarre coalition of neoconservatives with the $15-an-hour minimum-wage crowd might be just the thing to make up for the Democrats' deficiencies caused by their support for same-sex marriage and abortion on demand.

Furthermore, Hillary could rationalize about the Muslim extremists' misogyny and homophobia and learn to stop worrying and love an anti-Muslim war, in ways Obama has never been willing to do.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I hope that we finally recognize that we can't fight an endless string of foreign wars with the Praetorian Guard...

-I have no idea what this means. The US military is not, never has been, and hopefully never will be a Praetorian Guard. Closest thing to that in the USA is the Secret Service.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

...If we won't restart the draft, and make all Americans responsible for fighting the wars we choose to fight...

-Romanticized nonsense, based on mythological Hollwood WWII platoons, as I've noted ad infinitum.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

...then we will break the military and create a permanent class of disabled warriors we refuse to fully embrace. We're nearing that point already...

-Please. Despite the Proggies best efforts, we're nowhere near a "breaking point."

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

...Bring back the draft and vastly expand the age range of eligibility for volunteers. As it stands, in most cases a volunteer will not be accepted past age 28 unless they have prior service. That needs to change...

-Maximum age for the US Army was 38 back in the 80s (we had a 38 year old in my platoon during Initial Entry Training). IIRC, it was raised to 42 after 911. I don't know about now, but I assume that it's still at least 38, not 28. Feel free to provide evidence otherwise.

It just so happens that 28 was the age that was the break off point for usability during WWII; the age of conscription was 21-35, but they discovered that most guys over the age of 28 were too old, so they generally stopped unless they selectee had some other asset (prior service, MD, etc).

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

...First: context. The 1850-1920 era arguments hinge on continental expansion with an open frontier...

-NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! You are bringing preconceptions, false preconceptions, into your analysis.

One of the intersting things about Ferrie's study is that it shows show that socio-economic mobility was NOT a byproduct of the frontier. If it had been, socio-economic mobility would have ended soon after 1890 (p. 18).

Meanwhile, the Newburyport study shows that most men (in the 1850s) didn't even leave New England (pp. 935-936) to improve themselves, but they did have to get off their butts and go.

IOW, the studies show (AGAIN) the exact OPPOSITE of what you're claiming. Sheesh.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

...Since you're trying to be an expert on this study, you may be well advised to read it in depth...

-Not trying, succeeding.

You're the one who needs to read it again, Grasshopper.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...in_127611.html

...With Obama’s full support, by late 2012 Erdogan had built an opposition dominated by his totalitarian allies in the Muslim Brotherhood.

By mid-2013, Erdogan’s Muslim Brotherhood- led coalition was eclipsed by al-Qaida spinoffs. They also enjoyed Turkish support.

And when last summer ISIS supplanted al-Qaida as the dominant Sunni jihadist force in Syria, it did so with Erdogan’s full backing. For the past 18 months, Turkey has been ISIS’s logistical, political and economic base...

US commandos in Syria assassinated Abu Sayyaf, ISIS’s chief money manager, and arrested his wife and seized numerous computers and flash drives from his home... the drives provided hard evidence of official Turkish economic collusion with ISIS.

Due to Turkish support, ISIS has become a self-financing terrorist group. With its revenue stream it is able to maintain a welfare state regime, attracting recruits from abroad and securing the loyalty of local Sunni militias and former Ba’athist forces.

Some Western officials believed that after finding hard evidence of Turkish regime support for ISIS, NATO would finally change its relationship with Turkey...

Instead of maintaining its current practice of balancing its support for Turkey with its support for the Kurds, under the agreement, the West ditches its support for the Kurds and transfers its support to Turkey exclusively.

The Kurdish peshmerga militias operating today in Iraq and Syria are the only military outfits making sustained progress in the war against ISIS. Since last October, the Kurds in Syria have liberated ISIS-controlled and -threatened areas along the Turkish border...

After refusing for months to work with NATO forces in their anti-ISIS operations, Erdogan announced he was entering the fray. He would begin targeting “terrorists” and allow the US air force to use two Turkish air bases for its anti-ISIS operations. In exchange, the US agreed to set up a “safe zone” in Syria along the Turkish border.

Turkish officials were quick to explain that in targeting “terrorists,” the Turks would not distinguish between Kurdish terrorists and ISIS terrorists just because the former are fighting ISIS. Both, they insisted, are legitimate targets...

Turkish forces began bombing terrorist targets and rounding up terrorist suspects. Although a few of the Turkish bombing runs have been directly against ISIS, the vast majority have targeted Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria...

Already the Kurds are reporting that the US has stopped providing air support for their forces fighting ISIS in the border town of Jarablus. Those forces were bombed this week by Turkish F-16s.

For their part, despite Erdogan’s pledge to fight ISIS, his forces seem remarkable uninterested in rolling back ISIS achievements. The Turks have no plan for removing ISIS from its strongholds in Raqqa or Haskiyah.

The Obama administration is presenting the deal with Turkey as yet another great achievement...


-So, anyone actually ready to discuss the NBER study?

Originally Posted by JDG 66

...NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! You are bringing preconceptions, false preconceptions, into your analysis.

One of the intersting things about Ferrie's study is that it shows show that socio-economic mobility was NOT a byproduct of the frontier. If it had been, socio-economic mobility would have ended soon after 1890 (p. 18).

Meanwhile, the Newburyport study shows that most men (in the 1850s) didn't even leave New England (pp. 935-936) to improve themselves, but they did have to get off their butts and go.

IOW, the studies show (AGAIN) the exact OPPOSITE of what you're claiming. Sheesh...

-So, any chance M&L or Eric really are ready for a discuss on the analysis of the history of economic mobility in the USA yet?

Originally Posted by JDG 66

http://www.nber.org/papers/w11324.pdf

...Nineteenth-century observers were right: the United States was more mobile both socially and phyisically than other places... [p. 20]

The U.S. had more relative occupational mobility across generations through the 1900-1920 cohort than either Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century or the U.S. in the second half of the twentieth century...

The nineteenth and early twentieth century tables (1860-80, 1880-1900, and 1900-20) show approximately the same high degree of mobility, but the twentieth century tables all show considerably less mobility... (p. 11)

The consistency of the results across these data sets and time periods suggests that something fundamental changed in the U.S. economy after the 1900-20 cohort and no later than the 1950/56-1973 cohort and that this change dwarfs any changes in intergenerational mobility since the 1950s... (pp. 11-12)

The U.S. had more relative occupational mobility across generations through the 1900-1920 cohort than either Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century or the U.S. in the second half of the twentieth century... (p. 14)...