Officially, Germany ended the conscription era in 2011....saying they could recruit enough people to be successful....without drafting guys.
If you follow military chatter....there's a desire to enlarge the German military (probably in the range of 10,000 additional folks), and there's some admitted problems existing.....over getting young people signed up today.
So in the past (since the SPD-led coalition has come along)....some folks keep bringing up a draft idea. If you asked for political folks to raise their hands.....no one in a public situation wants to admit this draft idea is smart.
At this point today? If you entertained bringing it back....you'd have to include women, and probably spend most of the first hundred days getting people into physical shape.
Bonus your way out of this mess? The US has done this in the past. Convincing German leadership of spending another extra billion Euro a year on bonuses to get young Germans in? That won't sell easily.
I always thought you could entice these people with a 'house-fund'....giving them a down-payment amount of 15,000 Euro, and 10,000 Euro a year for five years....to get them into a favorable position for their first home purchase.
It's interesting to watch this conversation....because no one wants to really say the term 'draft', but they all know it's trending in that direction.
3 comments:
I like the incentive idea for the military. I think we should do the same with all the shortages before falling back on immigration as the solution all the time. Isn't that what free markets are supposed to be about? That labor is also free to move and shop for the best deal, and when they have the balance of power it should result in higher wages and better conditions. I hope maybe that's true one day.
Generally when workers have the balance of power they do everything they can to change that before increasing wages.
Having been around the US bonus system for the military....I will say that it generally works.
In the German mindset however, I think the university/intellectual crowd will have 'pain' over the idea of giving a 18-year old 'untrained' solder some path to a bonus deal.
With the cost of buying a house escalating as it is....I'd go and offer up a deal...do six years of active duty and get something like a 50,000 Euro house savings account (tax-free), and then move the individual to the reserve force on the 7th year....and offer up 1,500 Euro a year for next 20 years....pulling reserve duty (with some monthly cash allowance).
Lot of incentives here....just have to break out of the current mindset.
My opinion is that it should be made compulsory, all males from 18 to 45 should attend at least 1 year to 1.5 years of army training. It defies logic to not prepare your male population for war. I immigrated to Canada after university, but before university I attended army training (Artillery 155 mm guns) for one year.
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