The United States is perfectly willing to have a program that pays unskilled high school graduates with no family resources a good salary, houses them, sends them to college, and gives them physical and mental training—as long as there's an elevated chance of the youth in this program being killed or injured. My church recently had a young homeless guy come by and join the community for a bit before deciding that his only chance in life to get out of his situation was joining the army. I don't know if we'll see him again.
We have the money for all sorts of "socialist" programs like free college and a safety net for youth. But how, politically, do we make the decision to decouple it from inflicting violence on those youth?
The US makes living difficult for the poor so that they think joining the military is a good choice. If homes were affordable, if college was affordable, if healthcare was affordable, nobody would want to join.
We force poor people to join so that we'll have a military. We have wars to justify having a large military. We have a large military so that we'll purchase a lot of military equipment. We purchase a lot of military equipment to fuel the economy in specific congressional districts. We prop up those districts so that the people there have jobs and will reelect their representatives. Even the politicians who seem to support the "socialist" programs have no intention of following through with their promises.
The opposite is true. Life is so difficult for poor people that they are willing to go get killed or go to prison rather than starve. Especially if they have medical needs.
> We have the money for all sorts of "socialist" programs like free college
Most "developed" countries have free healthcare. Many have free or almost-free college.
The US is by far the less "socialist" society among wealthy countries.
We have the money for all sorts of "socialist" programs like free college and a safety net for youth. But how, politically, do we make the decision to decouple it from inflicting violence on those youth?