Editor,

I would like to respond to Jim Thompson’s letter of June 11, decrying the unfairness of a $15 minimum wage to our military. Quite frankly, at first I was shocked to think that our service members put their lives on the line for only $18,000 a year compared to a fry cook making $31,000 a year at $15 per hour. So I decided to do a little math myself.

Unlike the fry cook, a single E1 private in Oak Harbor receives a basic allowance for housing that starts at $891 per month, or $10,000 year. The E1 private will also receive complete healthcare coverage and medical care at no cost. At $31,000 year, the fry cook is only eligible for a high deductible health insurance plan that will cost at least $181 per month, thus reducing their annual income by at least $2,172 (if they do not actually need any healthcare). Thus, using Mr. Thompson’s figures plus numbers from government tables for housing and health insurance, the E1 private makes the equivalent of $31,242 without taking into account any other benefits of military service, such as college education options. And while the E1 private is guaranteed full pay for his/her enlistment, the minimum wage employee has no such guarantee, and likely does not even get to work 40 hours per week.

Also, I’d like to point out that an E1 private often enters the military fresh out of high school with the same set of “minimum skills” as a fry cook. Mr. Thompson makes two critical assumptions regarding the motivation of either the service member or the fry cook when he assumes that all fry cooks desire a job requiring “minimum skills,” or that all service members join the military for the altruistic reason of serving our country. Even in his day, not every enlistee volunteered out of a desire to serve our country, and the same is still true today.

Perhaps our country’s service members would be better served if Mr. Thompson advocated for them to receive better wages and benefits rather than grinding the poor beneath his boot-heel.

Respectfully,

ALORIA LANSHAW

Clinton