Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

by **sydnor** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 10:56:00

hey, thedude, what do you think of this back and forth between werthless and smooth. Me personally, I'm blown away that this is actually an argument.

Appreciate the link from werthless. While I'm not willing to just wave away the idea that poor kids serve more often than rich kids, I'm a helluva lot more open to it after reading that chart. Smoothie is awful sometimes.

by **The Nightman Cometh** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 11:01:28

Werthless wrote:
SK790 wrote:jeff, i'm just sick of upper middle class white people urging us to go to war when very few of them or their family members are willing to serve. the military is an escape for a lot of poor kids who have no other options. i don't really know or care what % of the army thinks we should stay or how it's relevant to my point, but i guess my point was a bit vague...

I used to think this was true, too.

Heritage foundation. I'm sure their research is solid.

Would love to see their definition of "enlisted" too.

by **dajafi** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 11:18:38

I miss the (possibly mythical) time when one could look at research without having to ask whether it was conducted and, um, massaged, specifically in order to reach a finding that comports with the researcher's/sponsor's preferred ideas about how the world works.

I guess with Heritage, you can break it down to pre-DeMint, when there might have been some intellectual honesty in the mix, and post-DeMint, when everything became subservient to Advancing The Narrative.

edit: this was pre-DeMint, so maybe it's solid. Maybe.

by **sydnor** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 11:21:32

Guys, I must be missing the avalanche of data that you all have showing that it is, in fact, poor kids, that join the military.

This is some data. I have taken it with some heavy grains of salt, but I used to always believe the previous and now that's not necessarily true. Like most liberals, that's not really going to change my overall philosophy on war and being generally averse to it. But if you can't take in new facts, even offered by the other side, then you're just as tone deaf as they are.

by **pacino** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 11:28:01

we launched more bombings overnight in the Kobani region of Syria, which is near the Turkish border. Previously, they stated that the bombings two days ago focused on the other Al Queda off-shoot, but now these targeted ISIS as they've been going after Kurdish towns in that region of Syria. 150K Kurds have flooded the Turkish border to flee fighting., but the Turks are blocking their border and preventing more from coming over.

reports are saying there's no water for people in those towns.

by **dajafi** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 11:30:00

jeff, I'm pretty much with you--far from convinced but at least open enough to the idea that I'll look for non-Heritage sources

Like this:

A 2008 study from Syracuse University examines the extent to which the poor and minorities are disproportionately selected into the military. While Amy Lutz, the author of the study, writes that relatively little research has examined this question empirically, although the Department of Defense keeps annual records on the race and gender of military personnel.

Lutz relays that a study done in 1980 found that from 1940 to 1973 blacks were less likely to join the military than whites, while in more recent years, a 2006 study concluded that blacks are overrepresented in the military. The same 2006 study found that people who serve in the military come from more well-off neighborhoods than those who have not joined the military — although the economic elite are underrepresented in armed service.

Lutz’s study also looks at the history of participation of the three largest racial and ethnic groups in the military — whites, blacks and Latinos — and examined ethnicity, immigrant generation and socioeconomic status in relation to military service. It concluded that significant disparities exist only by socioeconomic status, finding “the all-volunteer force continues to see overrepresentation of the working and middle classes, with fewer incentives for upper class participation.”
…
The military also seems to be drawing recruits who have less education, as a recent report documented the percentage of new recruits entering the Army with a high school diploma dropped to a new low.

The study, which was conducted by the National Priorities Project (NPP), found slightly more than 70 percent of new recruits joining the active duty Army had a high school diploma, nearly 20 percentage points lower than the Army’s goal of at least 90 percent.

Army officials confirmed lowering their standards to meet high recruiting goals in the middle of ongoing conflicts that the U.S. was involved in around the world.

Massachusetts-based research NPP concluded that the number of high school graduates among new recruits fell to 70.7 percent in 2008.

“The trend is clear,” Anita Dancs, the project’s research director who based the report on Defense Department data released via the Freedom of Information Act, told the Washington Post. “They’re missing their benchmarks, and I think it’s strongly linked to the impact [of] the Iraq War.”

The study also found that the number of recruits with both a high school diploma and a score in the upper half on the military’s qualification test fell by 15 percent from 2004 to 2007. An analysis of recruiting data revealed that low- and middle-income families are supplying far more Army recruits than families with incomes of more than $60,000 a year.

My read on this--and I have to either get back to work or move on to other forms of goofing off--is that the "poor fight the wars" notion is still basically correct, though the reality is maybe a little more nuanced than that.

edit: I have to believe that the likelihood of fighting and dying in a questionable foreign war influences the makeup of the military at any given time. If you're working/middle-class and have some options but can't find anything right now, maybe the military seems okay in peacetime but less so when you know you're going to be deployed. If you're poor and the options are starve, try crime or sign up, Door #3 still probably is the choice.

So in that sense, Heritage using some data from the 2000 Census probably would represent the spin move...

by **pacino** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 11:31:45

i dont see a cool chart though

by **drsmooth** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 11:51:15

sydnor wrote:Guys, I must be missing the avalanche of data that you all have showing that it is, in fact, poor kids, that join the military.

This is some data.

Mr Horrible here. Let me help you interpret the stuff I replied to Werthless with. Here it is: the Heritage data's not all that compelling.

No wait, it's not ONLY poor kids joining the military? Knock me over with a feather.

It's another thing, for a variety of reasons, to insinuate that well-off kids are over-represented, and only support it with Heritage-caliber data.

by **Bucky** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 13:10:25

by **RichmondPhilsFan** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 13:27:42

The Nightman Cometh wrote:
Werthless wrote:
SK790 wrote:jeff, i'm just sick of upper middle class white people urging us to go to war when very few of them or their family members are willing to serve. the military is an escape for a lot of poor kids who have no other options. i don't really know or care what % of the army thinks we should stay or how it's relevant to my point, but i guess my point was a bit vague...

I used to think this was true, too.

Heritage foundation. I'm sure their research is solid.

Would love to see their definition of "enlisted" too.

Wait, are they really breaking down households into four categories up to $65K, then lumping $65K-$234K into one category? Yes, I understand what a qunitile means, but good god that's an enormous range with little to no real-world meaning.

by **ashton** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 13:46:40

Holy shit, the new first lady of Afghanistan is a Christian!

In 225 years of democracy we've only had Christian first ladies. Afghanistan has only had two presidents and they've already had a non Muslim first lady.

by **smitty** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 13:52:07

I'm not convinced th neighborhood data is worth a flip. How do they draw the higher income neighborhoods from the lower ones? It's too hard in my view. Just based on the many places I've lived, you have really nice houses with well off folks living in them covering a few blocks right next to a more run down place. Also, apartment complexes located amongst high end neighborhoods.

In my experience, the enlisted folks were mainly kids from broken homes. Very few well off kids enlisted. I don't believe all that much has changed. Hell man, not many kids are enlisting to begin with to be honest.

The needs of the service are constantly changing as are the standards required for new enlistees.

Another aspect of this is where are the enlisted going? The Air Force or Navy? Much different than the Army or Marines. Also what jobs? Highly technical ones requiring a high intelligence score or being a grunt or in another combat arm? It makes a difference.

I would bet a dollar to a doughnut that the less wealthy kids are over represented in the combat arms and the wealthier kids dominate the kewl jobs in intelligence or the high tech jobs or the nice Air Force or Navy gigs.

It makes a difference.

by **TenuredVulture** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 14:17:01

"Neighborhood" is a pretty ambiguous term, so I'd imagine they're really using census tracts. Some census tracts, particularly in urban and suburban areas, are relativity homogenous, while rural census tracts are less so. They could be using census blocks as well. Or maybe they're using zipcodes, which really would be sloppy and terrible. Here's an article that will tell you much more than you want to know about some of these things.

http://beta.census.gov/housing/patterns ... alysis.pdf

The fact that quintile distribution of income by neighborhood looks different of that by individual should not surprise anyone. While there are billionaires out there, I bet all the US billionaires put together wouldn't fill a single census tract.

I will say that post 2008 or so, the recession and the draw down of troops resulted in a far more selective military that what you'd have send half a decade earlier. I was working with a drug court in the early 2000s, and we were sometimes asked by recruiters if we could "expunge" records of people who were trying to enlist in the military but had a drug conviction or two that would disqualify them for enlistment. This is also when all the stop loss stuff was going on.

Today, if I had to guess, I'd wager it's tougher to enlist in the airforce than most colleges. Though of course the airforce doesn't charge tuition.

by **pacino** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 14:35:49

Obama the commie traitor had tea in his hand getting off a plane so now he needs to be impeached.

by **swishnicholson** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 14:37:12

sydnor wrote:Guys, I must be missing the avalanche of data that you all have showing that it is, in fact, poor kids, that join the military.

This is some data. I have taken it with some heavy grains of salt, but I used to always believe the previous and now that's not necessarily true. Like most liberals, that's not really going to change my overall philosophy on war and being generally averse to it. But if you can't take in new facts, even offered by the other side, then you're just as tone deaf as they are.

Um, look at the chart. It shows that 75% of the recruits are from neighborhoods averaging 65K or below, which is well within the range of lower middle class and below.. It manages to squeeze in the other 25% by having an income range of well over 100K while all the rest are in segments limited to around 10K. The poorest of the poor are often ineligible for the armed forces since there are educational and behavioral requirements that are more challenging by those experiencing the hghest level of poverty.

I guess your assumptions were that only the lowest of the low would pursue military service, and so this has somehow upset these. If so, I'm glad you've been enlightened. The armed forces still draw largely, but not solely, on those in the lower economic tiers, and despite it's screwy design, that's just what this chart shows. What exactly is it you would have people concede?

by **sydnor** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 15:19:10

now you're just being a dick, swish. Dajafi had the same reaction I had evidently and went to look for some different results.

X amount of the population falls into each of these buckets. I had assumed that the richest 20% of neighborhoods would have much less representation than the 20% of people that fell into that group. In fact that's not the case.

Now, maybe what happened is that if you draw it into deciles, you might find that the 9th decile (That is to say people from 81%-90% wealthy neighborhoods) have maybe 20% representation in the military and the top decile (91-100% wealth) have maybe 5%. That would be kind of a squirrelly way to cut the data and I doubt the Heritage foundation is above that sort of thing. But it would also not surprise me at this point if the top 5% have 10% representation. When you start cutting these numbers up too finely, you get weird things to occur.

I've always liked the stat about how few members of Congress have children serving. I also take smitty's point that this doesn't show who is serving as a grunt vs. say, a drone pilot. But again, you and I took it as a fact that poor kids serve way more often than rich kids and I haven't seen a lot of evidence that this is the case.

by **SK790** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 15:39:47

Werthless, thanks for that data. It is really surprising to me that this is the case, but for reasons doc and other have outlined it's not very clean data. I'd be interested to see the breakdown of where these kids come from and their position in the military, as well. I'm guessing a lot kids from well off families are officers.

by **smitty** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 15:52:52

Anecdotally, the soldiers and young veterans that I have talked to recently are not from well off families. Don't believe the data from that extremely flawed "neighborhood" breakdown one bit. Need much better economic data which is pretty hard to get unless you actually get the economic status of our GIs and Marines when they enlisted.

by **Wheels Tupay** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 20:50:28

Can someone please explain to me how we knew a terrorist attack was close to happening yet we didn't know if the attack was going to take place or Europe or North America?

Also, gotta love how it was going to be a "9/11 style attack" too.

by **Bucky** » Wed Sep 24, 2014 20:51:53

Rome, Italy
Rome, Georgia

Archived

Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread

Re: Midterms, Middle East & Middle America - Politics Thread