National Service: can we afford it?

Abstract

This thesis estimates the costs, implicit as well as explicit, of three National Service proposals. The three proposals examined were: (1) a completely voluntary system as presented by Donald Eberly, the Director of the National Service Secretariat; (2) a "coercive-voluntary" model developed by Richard Danzig and Peter Szanton in their book "National Service: What Would it Mean?"; and (3) a mandatory system similar to the military draft of the Vietnam War era. Costs included were: wages, medical benefits/coverage, GI Bill benefits, administrative costs, basic and specialized training costs, operational costs and recruiting/advertising costs. Additionally, implicit (i.e., opportunity) costs were included in Models Two and Three. Estimates were made only of the costs of the programs. The assessment of potential benefits from an untested program is even more problematic than the attempt to estimate economic costs and is beyond the scope of this thesis. This research indicates that previous estimates of the costs of National Service programs may be underestimated by several billion dollars. In all probability, these estimates were low due to the unintentional exclusion of certain relevant costs, such as training and implicit costs. However, it is also possible that conservative assumptions were used in many previous estimates to make national service more politically appealing. It was found that the voluntary model of Eberly is the least costly, but is also unrealistic. Greater expenditures in wages and benefits would be necessary to provide enough incentives to enlist sufficient volunteers. This thesis suggests a program that provides better incentives for volunteers and presents a more realistic cost of a voluntary system. It is found that the term "National Service," as used in this context, more accurately describes a job creation program for lower income youth than a service program designed to attract youth from a cross-section of American society.