Quote:
Originally Posted by Sly
The outrage is because people are misinterpreting what was most likely intended. I highly doubt he is talking about forced community service.
Let's talk about community service in exchange for scholarships, other financial assistance, work while out of work, etc. etc. Any instance where people are getting "free money"... bring on the community service!
|
Perhaps. I think this whole thing is just a semantics issue and once the specifics are released it won't really be the thing everyone is making it out to be.
We already knew about the college thing...in order to qualify for the college tuition tax credit that Obama is proposing, community service would be required.
I think with the high school and middle school students it will most likely be part of their curriculum, not an after school or weekend or summer thing. It'll be a class full of kids going to a nursing home to read to old people or going to a soup kitchen to prepare and serve food.....no big deal, and a good character building exercise.
As for your remark about taxes and not getting anything back earlier....we've had lots of tax cuts over the last 30 years, and taxes are nowhere near their 1932-1979 levels today. So you do get things back sometimes.
Also, on the issue of compulsory military service, we had that here until Reagan. He wanted an all volunteer force because it would be a better trained force with higher morale.
It worked well so we've kept that in place.....but if we were ever in a situation where not enough people were volunteering to meet our national security needs, we would most certainly have a draft again.
That's something that governments around the world, democracy or not, have the power to do.