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OK, mr player, if you feel a bunch of our military don't deserve a retirement because they don't work as hard as you, or their job isn't as dangerous as yours, or you feel their job is insignificant to military operations, fine. Lets fix it this way. 1. If their job is so simple and doesn't warrant a 20-year military retirement, then convert it to a GS-6/7/8/9. The shit gets done, there's continuity, you don't have to keep training a bunch of newbies, and you could probably cut a few positions. 2. If the job requires someone to deploy every once in a while, keep just enough military such that their ops tempo is the same as everyone elses. Thus they can have a retirement because they are now working as hard as you. Now for you congresspeople. You want to cut military retirement, cut yours too. I say lead by example. Start with no retirement unless you serve 20 years. OUT

Yeah, that would really kill retention...I know it would make me think twice...365 remote...bite me! Why don't they kill some of the freaking social welfare programs. Son of a bitch dead beats with their hands out, not working for an honest pay check a day in their pathetic lives. I was once on food stamps, embarrassing as hell and I only did it for the absolute shortest length of time. That is the way the programs were designed. They weren't intended to benefit you for the rest of your damned life. I do realize that there are plenty of cases where people need welfare for the long haul, but McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC are almost ALWAYS hiring.

BL: I don't like you. You serve no other purpose than to validate retroactive birth control.

So wait, now you want to engage on the issues? Or do you still want to "retroactively abort" me? I'm confused... If you don't like my tone, then point taken, but throwing bombs is not the way to correct that. I might sound like a snarky asshole sometimes but based on the usual tone here on BO.net I didn't think that was outside the ops limits for discussion. I agree with everything you wrote here. This issue won't be touched because it's won't really solve the deficit meaningfully, and can't be backed politically. The only reason we're debating this is because the OP linked the army times story about this particular aspect of the Domenici-Rivlin plan. This isn't some pet issue of mine, I can't wait to get my 50% pay if/when I make it to 20. Hell, it's not something that's even gonna change, but, the story was posted and since outside groups are looking at this for ways to save money, I think it's smart to have a discussion among ourselves about what possible alternate systems might be acceptable WRT costs, retention, etc. If those in the military don't have an acceptable counter-proposal to whatever is being brewed up in think tanks and debt commissions, then we'll definitely be forced to bend over and take whatever is coming down the pike. Based on attitudes expressed here, apparently any changes, or even talk of changes, will cause the world to end and/or everyone to seek out guard positions; at least we know where we stand I guess. My idea was based on this premise: We're supposedly saying military retirement (or "retention") benefits are based on having been earned. Logically then, if we all get the same benefits in retirement assuming same rank and TOS, then we have all earned them equally. Really? Some 11B ground-pounder shooting it out in Iraq/Afghanistan has "earned" the same amount of retirement benefits as a desk jockey who's primary job is virtually identical to some GS civilian? We don't get paid equally while on active duty (flight pay, HFP, family sep, etc.), so why the feel-good, everyone's the same attitude once we hit 20 years?