The Economics of Conscription

Abstract

In recent years, the way in which governments procure military manpower has been subject to increasing criticism. During the United States' last presidential election, the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, proposed that conscription be abolished. With the publication of the Cordiner report on Professional and Technical Compensation,2 the idea that we abolish the draft in favor of a professional-forces concept of procurement has been gaining currency even among Congressmen.s Great Britain, one of our major allies, has announced an intention to abandon conscription as a way of obtaining personnel for her armed forces in 1960.' While a four-year extension of the Universal Military Training and Service Act was overwhelmingly passed by the last Congress, mainly for strategic reasons, the issue could and may of necessity be reopened before 1963.V From an economic point of view, it is fruitful to look upon conscription as a kind of tax having attributes in common with other taxes and features which are peculiar to the resource being taxed. Unfortunately, the word itself is not free from emotional overtones. Since some regard conscription as an unmitigated evil and others equate it with a sense of duty or the fulfillment of a sacred obligation to one's country, something that is not to be reduced to dollars and cents, the suggestion that we compare it to a tax is likely to be met with hostility and suspicion. Perhaps one of the reasons why there is a reluctance to view conscription as a tax is that it tends in practice to be a particularly arbitrary tax falling on a group with a special and partly fortuitous distribution by sex, age, mental ability, and physical condition. In any event, it should be understood that in presenting what is largely a public-finance point of view, I do not mean to imply that there are not other (extramarket) and perhaps overriding values and considerations involved in conscription. My sole contention is that the tools of economic analysis provide a basis for clearing away some of the confusion which surrounds an increasingly controversial issue, the peacetime draft, and possibly a basis for reconciling the views of individuals and groups who appear to be in opposition. While we are accustomed to thinking of conscription in relation to military activities, the results presented in this paper may be of interest to underdeveloped countries facing an acute problem of revenue raising.