Socialism for the elite but not for the masses?
Its not just the commissary. The entire way the military works is functional communism. Housing is assigned by rank, is available to anyone currently in contract, as well as healthcare and obviously, work. Pay is rated by rank and not by position, a Physician assistant gets the same rank pay as a Lt working command staff in any other unit. There is no capitalism in the DoD at all not even under their procurement systems.
The U.S. Military currently has a lot of problems with housing, feeding, and providing healthcare for service members. Check out USAG’s hawaii barracks for example. There’s a large number of lawsuits against the living conditions of family-housing. Dining Facilities that are intended and required to feed service members simply don’t.
Until recently Service Members couldn’t do anything if there was medical malpractice against them (and there was a LOT). And the act allowing medical malpractice suits was not retroactive, meaning everybody who served before 2020 was simply fucked.
Commissaries are (usually) genuinely good though. No complaints.
Understand that the government provided living conditions are not as good as you may be imagining.
Anyways here’s my personal anecdotes to bitch about: Goodfellow AFB many years ago. Sewage was leaking into the barracks’ (already shitty) Concho water pipes making it unsafe to drink and bathe. Lasted weeks. The water pipe above my room in particular was dripping onto our fridge and smelled like shit. I made a dumb fuckin gummy-bear funnel that diverted the leak into our sink because every single god damn person I asked to fix this problem said it wasn’t their issue.
and here’s the barracks room I was issued at my first duty station (that’s all mold):
Base pay may be the same, but there are several incentive pays available for various duties. Flight pay, sea pay, jump pay, hazardous duty pay, etc.
During the first year of Obama’s first term, with the push for the ACA, conservative pundit Bill Kristol got trapped by Jon Stewart into admitting the US government can run a first class health care program, but only for the soldiers because the rest of the public doesn’t deserve it.
First class? HAH!
Granted, my anecdote is more than 20 years old, but a simple blood test almost put me out because the intern taking my blood had to try 5 times, in two veins, just to get the few ml she needed, after exploding the first vein
That can happen in privately run care, too. The point was more that a then-leading conservative admitted he doesn’t actually believe that socialized health care can be of good quality, but the common people just don’t deserve to have access to it.
The military in general is like a complete socialist economy: socialized health care, home loan programs, car loan programs, banking, insurance, housing vouchers, tenant and homeowner protections, groceries at cost, retirement and pension, and to top it all off the thing itself is the country’s largest jobs program.
My husband and I, who are both Enlisted, have been saying for years that the military is proof that a form of socialism CAN work in the US. It’s not “true” socialism because we still have an owning class, but ffs, it’s a goddamned start. And its not just Active Duty who gets taken care of. Its also dependents, veterans (to an extent), and retirees. So there is the proof that the model is scalable.
At this point, I honestly believe that the biggest reason reason the government won’t let the US have free or even affordable Healthcare isn’t solely because of profits. It’s because they won’t be able to dangle free healthcare over the heads of poor teens to get them to Enlist. Same thing with the pension for re-enlistments.
I feel like those two items are purposefully withheld from the public to keep the military stacked.
