Because I Can

This past Thursday, Milton Friedman died at the age of 94. It is particularly interesting that this story, then, would come up in the AP that Charlie Rangel wants to re-instate the draft.

Asked on CBS' "Face the Nation" if he was still serious about the proposal for a universal draft he raised a couple of years ago, he said, "You bet your life. Underscore serious."

"If we're going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can't do that without a draft," he said.

The article goes on.

Rangel, who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, also said he did not think the United States would have invaded Iraq if the children of members of Congress were sent to fight. He has said the U.S. fighting force is comprised disproportionately of people from low-income families and minorities.

"I don't see how anyone can support the war and not support the draft. I think to do so is hypocritical," he said.

Congressman Rangel, you don't support the war, but you do support the draft. So what does that say about you?

Now economics tell a different tale of how this works.

This is a supply and demand graph for military labor. Economics treat goods as subject to supply and demand, even labor. What this shows is that the military is currently paying W1, and that is why the government is willing to pay for L2 but only getting L1 of labor. This model, of course, applies to the all-volunteer army. A draft army does not work this way, because soliders do not have a choice about joining the military.

So if you ask an economist how to increase troop levels, the answer is to pay the troops more. Let us examine the equilibrium wage of We. At this price, more troops are willing to serve, but the government is not willing to pay as many. This means that not only can troop levels increase voluntarily, but also the government will be more careful in the use of military force.

Rangle, though, makes the argument that Congressmen do not care about the money, only their own children, and that the element of fear is a vital deterrent of war. If that is the case, Rangle should advocate an all-draft army to increase the level of fear involved in the military as well as reduce the wages a little more. There are a few problems with this, not the least of which is that living in fear runs opposite to living in a free society. Not only that, but insisting on such tactics would reduce type I errors of unnecessary war and increase type II errors of unpreparadness and reluctance to fight when it is absolutely necessary.

This does not even go into the fact that his argument is flat out wrong. In the first place, Congressmen whose children go overseas can and likely will get preferential treatment - heck, when Al Gore was in Vietnam, he was a military photographer with a bodyguard - so there goes the congressman's fear. Then there's just the unpopularity of the draft; it is not coincidental that the 18-year-old right to vote was followed shortly thereafter by the all-volunteer army. Studies of the electorate have shown that politicians generally do what voters want, and according to this article in the Washington Post 70% of the public opposes the draft. Further, supply and demand are not complete or perfect models, but they are accurate, at least enough so that one could determine that increasing military salaries by at least 50% will drastically increase numbers in the service.

The relevance to Milton Friedman is extroardinary. In a debate with General William Westmorland (ht: Don Boudreaux) about the draft, Westmorland said to Friedman that he didn't want an army of mercenaries. Friedman had him right where he wanted him.

Mr. Friedman interrupted, "General, would you rather command an army of slaves?"

Mr. Westmoreland replied, "I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves."

Mr. Friedman then retorted, "I don't like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries. If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher."

Labels: Economic Stuff, Politics