What to do with Vets?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that for the last reported year the unemployment rate for Post 9/11 Veterans has fluctuated between 10 and 12 percent, well above their non-vet counterparts.  Those lazy good for nothin Vets.

Because we don’t have mandatory service a free-rider system has developed where almost all of the U.S. population (99 percent) benefit from the sacrifices of the few (one percent).  This means that the budding capitalists that felt entitled not go to war, to stay home and make love to their partners, to play with their children, to develop careers and job skills, to go to college, to party with friends, or make millions of dollars day trading, instead of getting shot, blown-up, or isolated in a god forsaken firebase, got a free-ride from those one percent, that did take those risks on their behalf.  The one-percent-vets watched their friends killed and maimed and he or she killed for you…the free-rider.  The Vet will carry these physical and emotional scars for a lifetime; the free-rider has already forgotten the war. The ones that volunteered to serve are economic and social suckers, paying a terrible price for a population that could truly careless.

So where are all these Vets going to work?  The National Park and Forest Service are the easy answers; a Vet should be given a living-wage full or part-time job with these organizations just by showing up in the morning…any morning (don’t suggest they become cops or prison guards, those are the last occupations a Vet should have). If a Vet does not want to work in the outdoors then a Vet employment agency will find the Vet a job instantly.  How do we pay for this entitlement program?  Tax the 99 percent free-riders; a tax is their moral obligation for either being too cowardly or too self-interested to face the risk of going to war for their country.  Maybe also special-tax Congressional wages and pensions since Congress allowed these wars to continue for so long. Next, tax the defense industrial complex that made trillions of dollars on the back of the Vet, or offer companies a partial tax relief from a Vet-Tax if they hire a significant number of Vets for as long as the Vet wants the job.  These are just a few ideas; the creation of a Vet employment agency would actually be easy to do.

Lastly, these jobs have to be open to all GWOT Vets regardless of type of discharge or subsequent legal issues.  The Vet wasn’t broken or a felon before they went into the service, they couldn’t have gotten in if they were…and again, they paid a price 99 percent of the rest of the population refused to pay, the Vets' subsequent issues were exactly the problems the 99 percent were trying to avoid by not going to war.  So the 99 percent, that again were too cowardly or self-interested to go to war, should not judge those that did and are now suffering.

Of course the bigger issue here is that the overwhelming majority has been able to send the minuet minority to war going on 14 years now without public discussion or an acknowledgement of the ongoing debt owed by the many to the few.  This stratified free-rider program is unhealthy for a democracy; creating a bifurcated class of corporate/government versus warrior with the corporate/government class grossly profiting from the sacrifice of the warrior.  A democracy can only be healthy when all accept the same risk and suffer the same reward; until this happens a Vet should have living-wage employment for life…and the 99 percent free-riders should pay for it.