You'll Never Get Rich...

Say what you will about military service, the pay ain’t all that great. Never has been, never will be. Even general officers’ pay and benefits, while hardly subsistence level, pale by comparison to private sector executive compensation. Obviously, financial compensation issues are hardly at the top of the list of hardships and sacrifices made by members of our Armed Forces these days, but they are significant nonetheless.

Benefits do compensate somewhat for lower wages. Obviously, there is the matter of health care. Military personnel also qualify for education benefits and, of course, have access to commissaries and exchanges to do much of their shopping. These stores are extremely important for military personnel stationed overseas, but whether they are really all that much of a bargain and therefore benefit to service members back in the States in these days of big box discount stores is increasingly questionable.

Another military benefit is specialized recreational facilities. Typically, but not always, these facilities, e.g., libraries, bowling alleys, movie theaters, golf courses, etc., are located on military installations. Again, they are of great value to service members overseas. The question occurs, however, whether Armed Forces Recreation Centers, several of which are located overseas, should also be operated inside the United States. Currently, such centers are maintained in Hawaii and in Orlando, Florida and now one is being added in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

I learned of the Virginia Beach facility at James Joyner’s Outside The Beltway, where a question of whether these facilities are tax subsidized or not arose. They are. While the day-to-day operations of the facilities may be self-sustaining from user fees and other non-appropriated fund revenues, the facilities themselves are paid for by appropriated funds (tax dollars) and, I know from personal experience, there are a variety of methods by which appropriated funds can also be channeled quite legally into such facilities. An installation commander might decide, for example, to locate some official function there, all costs for which would come from the commander’s (appropriated fund) budget. There’s nothing wrong with this, but the claim that AFRC’s are “self-supporting” is misleading, at best.

Another possible objection raised by Mr. Joyner is that these facilities charge lower ranking military personnel less than higher ranking, higher paid personnel. “The communistic approach of subsidizing lower paid employees at the expense of those higher in rank/grade is puzzling but fairly common for MWR activities. Day care centers and similar activities on bases typically operate that way, too.”

Well, it is indeed fairly common but not really all that puzzling. As one reader at Mr. Joyner’s site noted, the operation of these facilities permit poorly paid enlisted personnel the opportunity to take a vacation in Hawaii or Disney World or, now, the Virginia coastline. (Loyal Virginian though I am, this last isn’t quite on a par with the American Beach on the Italian Riviera at Camp Darby.) The Department of Defense publicly downplays the reality that the military services operate as a planned, command economy; but they obviously do, and that includes subsidizing low revenue activities with high revenue activities and sliding user fee scales for some recreational facilities. Yes, colonels pay more to use these things than sergeants, but they have a much easier time getting reservations there, too.

Even we minimum-state libertarians, or at least the majority of us, nonetheless recognize the need for national defense, a recognition quite apart from how large that military structure should be or whether we think the Armed Services are being properly used. In the grand scheme of government waste, fraud and abuse, I can’t imagine seriously begrudging the average soldier, sailor or airman a dollop of tax subsidy to support a vacation facility the service member can more easily and readily afford and enjoy. Nor do the socialistic mechanisms of these things bother me, especially after having had lunch a few times over the years in a general officer’s (tax subsidized) mess. Put differently, when we get anywhere close to that minimum state, then I’ll gladly take another look at such things.

Finally, on a personal note, Mr. Joyner writes, “I can understand having a place where soldiers serving overseas can get away and be among English speakers, although, frankly, doing that takes away most of the personal benefit of serving abroad.” I couldn’t agree more. Sadly, however, a significant number of military personnel and their families stationed, not in the Middle East but in Europe, mind you, do not consider such a posting the exciting opportunity Mr. Joyner or I might. In fact, many consider living, e.g., in Italy to be a hardship.

I know this first hand, having worked for the U.S. Army for several years in Vicenza, Italy, twenty minutes away from Venice. Of course, dealing with “the local economy” outside the military reservation is daunting for anyone who, like me, struggles with foreign languages. But it goes deeper than that. There, in a country with some of the best cuisine in the world, one enterprising American did very well for himself by opening right across the front gates of the camp, of all things, a Domino’s Pizza franchise.