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I'm pretty sure he did. Also a son at USAFA while he was the Comm. p.s. unlike Ohio State, "the" does not precede USAFA... ;)

The problem with your theory is that the individual doesn't necessarily have total control over what they do, career-wise. A person may WANT to take on those more dangerous jobs in order to earn a better retirement... however, the military may say "sorry, you're not what we need" or "We need you elsewhere" or "You're being non-vol'd to XX position which doesn't earn near as much retirement pay as your current duties do". In the corporate world an individual has the opportunity to advance into other areas if they're not content with the deal they are getting. They can go back to school and get an advanced degree to move up in the company, move to a different company entirely, start their own company, choose a whole other career choice, etc. But with the military, while you affect your career and can help your chances, you are also dependent on what big blue decides for you.

Really? Your posts are laced with passive aggressive insults to anyone who disagrees with you, which leads to the "BL: ToughShit" response and you get all butt hurt when someone replies...really? Grow a pair of stones. You want to have a debate, fine with me, but your bias serves comes out as sanctimonious elitism. There are huge fiscal issues facing this country and of course no one wants to have their ox gored. A litmus test to determine levels of military retirement based on your type of service....really that is what you have? While the military retirement system is expensive, it is not the problem. From a military budget point of view, the issue is acquisition costs, (O and M for USAF), and Tricare. Spend all the brain-bytes you want fixing those programs but the real issues are the social entitlement programs. Medicare (it will break us), Medicaid, and Social Security (now in the red while leveraging a non-existent trust fund).

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?