On the falling american economy ( why there wont be a draft.....)

Just a thought that occured to me recently, and im curious if anybody agrees or disagrees with my line of thinking here....

My theory in a nutshell....

The obviously quite militant administration in washington seems to be turning a blind eye toward the nations current economic decline....

Why would they do this?

Then it occured to me...

If the american economy is allowed to spiral downward into a depression and unemployment becomes rampant, then any employment providing a living wage for a citizen and his family would look very attractive...

suddenly a military career/ enlistment starts to sound very attractive....

A stalled domestic economy could lead to a boom in enlistment as other options for employment diminish.

This would allow the Military to swell its ranks while deflecting the negative public outcry that would accompany a draft. Furthermore it would help to keep a larger percentage of the population from an anti war stance as a greater percentage of the population would have family in voluntary active service....

Or maybe i think too much....

what do you think?

just my 2 cents.......

please dont everybody comment all at once......

certainly there must be at least someone who thinks im a quack....

OK, I think you are a quack.


Seriously though, you could be right, but I don't think the two are really tied together. The military is stretched so thin that it can't really sustain another war right now. The economy has a long ways to go before the people will turn to government jobs for security.

I just think that the two are on different timelines. If we start another war, we will need a rapid influx of troops and our economy probably won't be a total disaster by that point. If we don't go to war, we won't need a draft or more troops so then the economy won't matter.


*edit to put lol in correct place. I don't actually think you are a quack.

[edit on 21-11-2007 by Karlhungis]

i wont call myself a quack...even if i feel ducky....


I certainly understand your hesitancy to link the economy downturn to military need, and im not suggesting the falling economy is an artificial construct to swell military ranks. I am suggesting thou that it might be to the militarys benefit to allow the economy to continue to spiral downward... I would also disagree about the difference in timelines, insofar as the american economy seems to be about as stable as a house of cards right now, and could be induced ( intentionally or otherwise ) to collapse with very little warning. ( China dumps the dollar or Oil trading switched to a differing currency for examples ) .....Going a bit further along this bent it could also be possibly triggered by a major terrorist attack on the US infrastructure....in which case the government would have the best of both worlds.... A destabilised economy drawing people into the military, a very fast pro war shift in public opinion and the ability to place the blame on whomever ( the admin) decides has perpetrated the attack.....

a fictional example.....

Al queda manages to drop a suitcase nuke on wall street....

thousands die, the stock market crashes, .......hundreds of thousands are out of work .....
after carefull investigation its determined Iran ( or whatever other target they pick) is the supplier....and the masses rally to exact vengence...

a purely hypothetical scenario of course but im sure you see where im going with it....

just my 2 cents.......

I certainly dont think oyu're a quack its a different idea and i think it could be a way of doing things. I think the US economy is going to collapse, and what a better way to get the minds of americans off the economic colapse than print more money and head into a war like it did in ww2?

Actually it was a conversation about vietnam vrs world war 2 that got me to thinking about this....

We were discussing the difference in public sentiment on the draft issue, and the liklihood of another draft occuring in the US.
In the event the american economy does collapse i cant imagine anything other than a major war dragging the economy back out of a major depression....

I would hazard a guess, crush a few oil rich regimes and start demanding war reparations.....