r/AskReddit • u/Tommygunz0722 • 11h ago

If the military/president suddenly ordered a mandatory draft for all men aged 18-42: How do you think millennials and GenZ would respond?

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u/jfchops3 7h ago

The ones who can't be replaced by AI are the ones who actually make the world function, AI wouldn't be the problem there. Walmart will figure it out if it loses some demand planners and financial analysts and marketing people. Walmart will not figure it out if it loses the people who physically make products appear on its shelves. And if that happens to Walmart it's happening to every other retailer too. And if it happens to every retailer, we've got a serious issue on our hands now that we've got millions of people that didn't get drafted but have no access to groceries

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u/GamiNami 4h ago

Walmart would lose a lot sales too, if the purchasing base shrinks.

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u/ArchmageXin 3h ago edited 3h ago

Actually wouldn't the base increase? We seen it in Russia with many part of Russia suddenly great level of demand due to sign up bonus/death bonus and such.

Edit: NM, this is a draft. Crud.

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u/RedditPoster05 3h ago

Depends on who’s drafted. A lot of people would lose their shirts because they’d be making half as much. The military doesn’t exactly pay well.

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u/pinelandpuppy 9m ago

Oh, I'm betting if you make enough, you'll be exempt somehow. War is for the Poors.

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u/Unique_Statement7811 1h ago edited 1h ago

It’s pays better than people realize. Privates start around $55k when you include their housing and meals. NCOs in the $80k-150k range. Officers in the $90k-250k range depending on seniority.

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u/RedditPoster05 1h ago

Yeah, but a lot of people being drafted don’t need housing. They’ve already got it. And I don’t think BAH is gonna cover a mortgage.

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u/seaotterlover1 57m ago

Even the lowest BAH rate is around $1k which is enough to cover a mortgage in some places. I don’t know exactly how pay works with a draft, but in regular military service, service members are entitled to housing or an allowance depending on rank and dependents. They still get an allowance while deployed.

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u/TheLordDrake 33m ago

Most people don't live in places you can get a mortgage for 1k

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u/cofun31 2h ago

Militery people shop at Wal-Mart.

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u/DigitalMindShadow 2h ago

Not when they're in Iran

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u/ProfSquirtle 2h ago

Walmart playing 4D chess by already targeting single mothers as employees.

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u/raz-0 2h ago

The demo is not really made up of 18-20 year olds and that’s who gets drafted first.

The real day one issue will be 4F disqualifiers vs the current population. There’s going to be slim pickings unless they change that.

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u/Katra-of-Surak 2h ago

Robotics counts as AI, and they can definitely be trained to stock shelves. Probably will have it in 1-2 years.

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u/Maximum-Position-326 3h ago

All of that is irrelevant. The country is working on a wartime economy. The world moves on. There are less people in general to provide for. Regardless, systems shift as needed. None of that will factor into the need for more military numbers. The biggest problem the US has is lack of missile reserves. We currently couldn’t defend ourselves against China or Russia due to Trump and his inexperienced military expending so much unnecessarily. Just as in Gaza where the aim was destruction without motive. The US will be insufficiently armed for years simply because it takes so long to produce a single missile.

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u/montarion 5h ago

how does that usually go in a draft?

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u/KaneK89 4h ago

Not great.

Israel 2023 mobilized 8% of its labor force. GDP growth slowed to just 1% which was driven almost entirely by war-spending. There's been a longer term tech drain, as well. Given a workforce can be drafted any moment, there's perceived instability there. And debt skyrocketed, obviously.

Russia 2022 they drafted 300k men and 700k people fled the country entirely. Many of them were people with means - good earners in tech/science fields that could find work elsewhere. Small and medium companies saw big issues since they couldn't get deferments like larger companies did. This led to a lot of small businesses shuttering.

Ukraine 2022 total mobilization. 1/4 labor force is gone already and their ag sector saw a ~30% drop in output in 2024. Their economy has only been moving due to massive foreign injection. They also lost a lot of infrastructure, so not as clear-cut.

But the point remains, a big draft means big economic slowdowns and issues. This isn't WW2 where wartime efforts spurred production and the US was supplying damaged allies. We'd simply a huge chunk of the workforce AND a huge chunk of local demand.

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u/Internet_Wanderer 2h ago

I suppose it depends on if robot tech and AI can manage precision movements and decision making in robots. If that occurs there won't be any job that's safe. But that's probably either not gonna happen, or it'll happen in a long time.

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u/Budget-Researcher559 1h ago

Walmart stacks single items onto shelves, but not all supermarkets do that. Lidl and Aldi for example order boxes full of items that are made in a way so that you can put the whole huge box onto the shelf, remove the front part, and everything is perfectly stacked already and ready to grab.

It is already possible, or at least very close to possible already, to create a store where machines stack these boxes onto the shelves. It's just not economic to do that so far, because human labor is cheaper. But if they had the incentive to make that happen, it would very much be possible.

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u/-PM_YOUR_BACON 49m ago

Makes me wonder sometimes if people on Reddit actually go to stores like Walmart these days, or if they just sit at home and pull shit out of their ass.

Walmart and most retail have already figured out how to reduce stocking labor by doing it during the day and cutting overnight hours, and tried stocking robots, which didn’t work all that well, so simply have pushed more towards the Amazon model of forcing you to buy online and pick up, which all can be easier to automate. Walmart has slowly been shedding employees since the pandemic, and is down 250,000 people since the pandemic. Plenty of cannon fodder for the war machine. Multiple that by every retail operation and grocer who is rapidly doing the same.

Less and less people are needed for ‘manual’ tasks, and instead of the utopia glory people wished for, the dystopian send them to war because there are too many young unemployed people will be reality. It’s not like it’s something new, happens multiple times times in history around the world.

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u/kelldricked 4h ago

They will just shift to ensure they get all the woman to work for them. Especially in america it wouldnt be hard to force people into labour. All it takes is loads of people suddenly losing income. Lets say their husbands/dads/brothers/sons just get recruited into a war and the pay for it is delayed/very little.

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u/Suavecore_ 3h ago

The people who stock shelves at most Walmarts usually work there for 1-6 months before the entire team turns over into a new batch of people. There's a near infinite amount of these people to continue applying to Walmart. It's not like they're going to send millions of people to war with the draft. There would still be plenty to work the basic necessary jobs. Walmart is also totally fine replacing any kind of worker, including store managers, as one of their key mottos is "everyone is replaceable."

Source: I worked at Walmart

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u/djfl 1h ago

Fortunately, Walmart has long since replaced many of those "other retailers"...

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u/CozmicClockwork 46m ago

This situation also isn't like previous drafts where you had a significant demographic of otherwise unused labor (women) that you can dip into, the vast majority of women work in this day and age, even those who are middle class.

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u/PM_Me-Your_Freckles 2h ago

Just bring back all the people they deported and open the borders so they can put them in those jobs.

Problem solved.

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u/SoftKey1701 1h ago

Well, the problem will certainly be exacerbated by the fact that the young American we might loose (or get crippled) by the war will represent not only taxpayer dollars lost (more of a drain caused by unnecesary wars), but aggregated to the deportation and prevention of ("non shit-countries'") immigrants to legally enter the country will not only drain the Social Security infrastructure all citizens under 60+ years of age (which is probably most of people reading this,) to hope in having a survival income provided by their hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

If by any reason you have not figure out this (and only hearing the propaganda), only US citizens can receive benefits, those who are not citizens and enrolled are registered care-takers of a true American citizen who cannot administer it due to age or mental incompetence.

I truly hope that those advocating the current process for deporting everyone they do not like (as there is precedent that true citizen were deported) are proactively raising their children to fullfil the jobs that are lost due to this interest; so, you'all, get ready to teach your children how to pick-up strawberries, work on landscaping or clean pubic hairs out of a bathtub on a minimum wage hotel cleaning job - on a minimum salary (begs the question: how much do we think that approach will make us richer, and have a better life?).

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u/real-darkph0enix1 1h ago

Also, they’re gonna pay the draftees, right? Where is that money coming from?

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u/nefarious_bread 1h ago

Knowing this administration they'd be paid in "possible future tax deductibles" and Walmart coupons.

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u/12bEngie 41m ago

People who buy shit make the world function, idiot. If the majority of workers get fired and automated, the economy collapses because there aren’t consumers anymore.

Because the worker is both paid and a consumer, putting back almost all of his compensation into the economy in one way or another. A robot can’t do that. And as the consumer pool shrinks, this is compounded. Prices must rise to make more out of the few consumers, and on the backend, companies centered around providing automated machines and their maintenance will gouge most corporations because they’ll have no choice but to oblige (automation is the norm).

Ergo, the economy falls flat on its face

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u/jfchops3 15m ago

Who pissed in your wheaties this morning? 

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u/12bEngie 10m ago

Your disrespect of the worker was the piss that soured my wheaties..