It’s worse than that. Much like the corporate, “middle class” white collar structure depends on keeping people too indebted to ever really have power or freedom to negotiate for fairness, the military also depends on underpaying and overworking its people. They have to provide that same level of inadequacy, and then, make not getting it even more unbearable.

When you start to look at the math, a lot of the previously incomprehensible decisions of the government start to make sense. Why is abortion illegal? Because given free choice, poor people stop reproducing at levels needed to maintain the slave wage labor when they can’t afford the basic necessities to raise a family. Or more specifically, women do… you can find a willing sperm donor, but the mom gets told by society don’t have a baby you can’t afford, and does exactly that. And then they trot out a whole “God doesn’t like this” moral argument, all while happily looking the other way when it’s clear a bunch of their leaders party fucked kids on an offshore island.