Trump's deployment of the National Guard to Washington, DC costs more than 4 times as much as it would cost to simply house every homeless person in the city, according to researcher Hanna Homestead.
Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it cost about $530 per Guard member, per day to be deployed.
How?! How could sending people that are already on the payroll to a different city cost this much? And you are really going to push such a claim, with the source being “some guys said so” and pretend to be a news organization we should take seriously?
Because they are taking the entire cost of the operation, and dividing it by the number of folks deployed.
So that includes logistics, housing, food, equipment maintenance. Including those big expensive fucking trucks, etc etc. And of course, the MIC gets a big cut too.
First, I’m going to heavily qualify this statement. Like, a lot. I have never served in any military capacity and I’m repeating something a member of the Canadian military told me, which could easily be wrong for 20 reasons.
National Guardsman are similar to our “reservists” and are not paid when inactive. If additional troops who were already trained but not active, we’re then activated, that would account for additional costs.
So yeah, massive grain of salt but you asked and someone gave me a reasonable answer that seemed to fit. I have done no fact checking, though.
Thanks for the explanation. My understanding was that in the US, the national guard also had regular troops, not just reservists, but maybe they did call the reservists despite that or I misunderstood/misremembered.
Regardless, I still think an article explicitly about the cost of the deployment giving no information on this is absurd.
I don’t want to be the contrarian but:
How?! How could sending people that are already on the payroll to a different city cost this much? And you are really going to push such a claim, with the source being “some guys said so” and pretend to be a news organization we should take seriously?
Because they are taking the entire cost of the operation, and dividing it by the number of folks deployed.
So that includes logistics, housing, food, equipment maintenance. Including those big expensive fucking trucks, etc etc. And of course, the MIC gets a big cut too.
Payroll is probably a small portion of that $530.
First, I’m going to heavily qualify this statement. Like, a lot. I have never served in any military capacity and I’m repeating something a member of the Canadian military told me, which could easily be wrong for 20 reasons.
National Guardsman are similar to our “reservists” and are not paid when inactive. If additional troops who were already trained but not active, we’re then activated, that would account for additional costs.
So yeah, massive grain of salt but you asked and someone gave me a reasonable answer that seemed to fit. I have done no fact checking, though.
Thanks for the explanation. My understanding was that in the US, the national guard also had regular troops, not just reservists, but maybe they did call the reservists despite that or I misunderstood/misremembered.
Regardless, I still think an article explicitly about the cost of the deployment giving no information on this is absurd.