2836

According to this chart, China holds about $1 trillion in US securities.

Major foreign holders U.S. treasury securities 2022 | Statista.

image

2837

I think the threat, to the extent it is seriously mooted, is about selling the bonds (and presumably but not necessarily using other currencies more for their FX reserves). And there’s plenty of things they could use dollars for - oil, repo financing for their banks, etc.

2838

While $1T sounds like a lot – hell, it is a lot! – it’s still only about 3% of the total in US securities debt (which is $30.9T, per that same source).

2839

I guess I’m still not seeing the threat. China sells a US treasury they hold to someone else. Now what?

2840

Due to low recruiting , the Navy raised its recruitment age to 41.

I suspect due to division of country and economic issues recruitment is going to have serious issues.

2841

Good lord. I cannot imagine how hard it would be to go through basic training at 41.

2842

I would think that recruitment would go up during economic downturns, as other opportunities become more scarce. But I have no data to back that up, just my assumption.

2843

This report from probably 2010 or so indicates yes there is a general connection between the civilian economy and recruitment and retention:

Recruiting and retention are sensitive to the state of the economy. Studies indicate that a 10 percent decrease in the civilian unemployment rate will reduce high-quality enlisted recruiting by 2–4 percent. Retention also declines when unemployment decreases, but appears to be less sensitive to the state of the economy than recruiting. The recent economic downturn has improved recruiting and retention and has allowed the services to reduce use of enlistment and reenlistment bonuses. However, this improvement is expected to diminish as civilian economic conditions improve.

Also, it has this graph:
enlist

This article from May of this year indicates a similar link, though COVID certainly plays a role too.

As for polarization and politics, there are any number of articles, studies, and what not from academics, former defense officials, pundits, and more on the topic. This set of comments about a WSJ article is pretty typical of the right-wing view; I’m sure there are collections of views from the other side of the picture as well out there.

I think it’s pretty clearly established that in general the more economic opportunity people see in the civilian sector, the less likely they are to sign up for the military, all things being equal (that is, no war/crisis or that sort of thing). And of course, the worse the civilian economy gets, especially unemployment, the more likely people in the appropriate age brackets are to sign up.

As that story about the Navy and recruiting age limits shows, though, there is a fairly narrow band of people eligible for service, and only a portion of those meet all the physical, mental, emotional, and legal requirements I would think. It stands to reason as well that people who could join might decide not to if they feel estranged from military culture in some way, either because it’s too woke for them or because they see it as full of fascists. But the data on that seems much harder to obtain.

2844

This sounds like a call to action for dropping the difficulty of basic as well.

2845

But that’s the weird thing about what’s happening right now. Opportunities aren’t scarce. Virtually anyone can go get a job at Amazon for $15-$20/hour with full medical benefits any time they want. There are millions of job openings sitting unfilled, and the Fed is actually taking action to intentionally prevent that from continuing.

2846

There’s a risk with that as well, basic tends to do a good job capturing the folks who will make low-quality soldiers in every way.

We had issues with this during Iraq war due to a loosening of standards. It’s better to have not enough troops, than troops who are a negative value.

Even with our pretty high standards, about 25% of folks who make it through basic still wash out during first term for some reason.

That said, Amazon job is worse than being junior enlisted right now IMO.

2847

That’s how you end up with Russian cannon fodder.

2848

I don’t disagree with either of you to be sure, but if the age of enlistment is raised to 41, we’d expect a drop in both the cognitive and physical abilities of older enlistees. Without revising standards (likely lowering them), you’re going to have a higher wash out rate, and then you’re back to square one.

I can’t speak for most people, but physically I feel that it’s much harder to stay in shape after I hit the big 40, and I don’t feel mentally as agile either.

2849

I’m going to be a little facetious and say “It’s the Navy.” No sailors are going to be doing 15 mile forced marches with 120 pounds of gear and then assaulting an objective. (The article does say that SEALs and divers are still age restricted but I wonder how it applies to corpsmen attached to Marine units.)

2850

Seabees probably have similar restrictions- they have to be able to keep up with Marines.

2851

Very, very much this. They’re puttering around in boats and ships, and the actual physical demands of the job are mostly going to be about climbing up and down ladders. You certainly want them to be fit, but there are reasonable levels of fit, and the model of totally breaking them down physically and rebuilding them in 13 weeks to get them fit is entirely unnecessary.

I mean, look at 41+ Y/o NCOs and officers. It’s not like there aren’t any, and it’s also not like they’re all models of fitness themselves, once you get out of direct combat arms MOSs.

2852

41 year olds are 100% going to be better cognitively than an 18 year old. More experience, better judgement, more even temper, better social skills, all of it. There is no comparison. 18 year olds are generally morons. I was a moron. All the 18 year old E-1’s who worked for me when I was a young JO were morons.

41 year olds who meet minimum standards to enter basic training will have no problem completing it. I’m 46 and just did a 27 mile walk across the Grand Canyon a couple of weeks ago; I trained up a bit for it, but not a crazy amount. Everyone else in my group is over 40 and they all went across and back in a day. Some of them are athletes, but most are just avid hikers.

2853

I guess the question is: how many 41-year-olds are out there who want to enlist in the Navy for the first time? I guess there are some, but there can’t be a lot, can there?

2854

I have had a recurring nightmare occasionally for the last two decades where I am recalled to service and find myself putting on a uniform and dragging myself back onto a ship. They are very vivid dreams and when I wake up it inevitably takes a couple of minutes to realize it’s not real, after which I am nearly ecstatic with relief.

2855

Hah! I have the same dream about being back in college!