Progressive Draft?

There has been increased chatter lately about reinstating the draft. The posts last week in Slate offered up some interesting ideas about the draft that I thought were worth considering as well as some obviously tongue -in-cheek options. I liked the Foreign Legion type idea where we use mercenaries and offer them citizenship in return for service. One idea that I thought was missing, however was the idea of a progressive draft, like a progressive tax, that would even the playing field between the rich and poor. How would that work? Instead of the bullshit draft by birthday system of the Vietnam War, we would use weighted random selection from the draft registry database. Men on the registry would be given weights or probabilities based on the economic status of their parents. I believe in this solution for the same reason that I believe in a progressive tax: the wealthy owe more to the state because the state establishes and maintains the system in which they acquire their wealth. The upper class in this country receives all kinds of advantages that they all seem to forget about when tax season rolls around and they get to whining.

First of all, the government maintains only the most lax controls over corporate behavior. This ensures that the wealthy can use free market arguments to build profits at the cost of their employees. Business like WalMart get away with paying their employees a minimum wage that keeps them below the poverty line. The corporate world also uses labor in undeveloped nations to keep costs down while charging a premium for their products ie: $100 pairs of sneakers from Nike made by children for a pittance in southeast Asia.

Second, the progressive tax helps to redistribute wealth to help bridge the gap in advantage established by the aforementioned practices. It is admittedly mildly socialistic to demand that the government supply some social services to the poor by taxing the rich, but it is a fact that most have come to accept in this country: pure Capitalism is essentially heartless, while pure Socialism is essentially brainless. So we've learned to live with a little compromise between the two here in the good old US of A.

If that makes any sense at all when asking people to give up their money, I don't see why it is any different when asking people to give up their lives. Does a kid from South-Central LA owe more to his country than a Seneator's son? I don't fucking think so. The wealthy kid has lived his entire life benefitting from the socio-economic system maintaind by the state and its laws. The poor kid has not. For me, I land somewhere in between, and, despite my hatred for the Shrub administration and its catastrophic war in the mideast, I would stand behind a progressive draft. As it stands now, with five years of draft ability (I think) under the current rulse, I hereby pledge to fight the draft with all my strength if it is ever reinstated under any other conditions.