Are members of the military paid too much?

LTC Jason Strickland and SSgt Terry P. I too believe this has ALWAYS been an apples to lawnchairs type comparison. Pay is also a narrow view of compensation. 30 "vacation days" per year and not accounting for minutes and individual hours in 30 minute increments in the "workplace" is pretty nice and few civilian organizations can measure up to that. But we don't pay OT, but do have separation pay. Until Walmart offers closing with and destroying the enemy in close combat as a service, comparisons are only anecdotal. The fact that we have a federally mandated pay grade system that essentially ignores individual branches, MOS, AFSC, and the like makes it even more absurd.

Further, the application of health care To the SM as a component of compensation is contaminated by government interest in your deployability and readiness. If you get sick or out of shape whilst employed by Schmuckatelli County School District, so what? It is of unique Government Interest as a service member. The confluence of pay and allowances further convolute the issue. Further, the retirement system, less so under the blended system, remains a retainer for you to be available for recall, usually not a feature of a civilian retirement system as a compulsory and regulatory matter, though some. Feature a retired annuitant type aspect to temporarily "ask" for people to help solve underlaps and programmed absences (like medical leaves, FMLA, post partum leave etc). The annuitant can simply say, nah.

There is also the aspect of lost economic opportunity of spouse income that isn't really addressed anywhere, whether officer, NCO, or enlisted.

I certainly can't speak for the rest of the country, but I live in the Dallas Ft. Worth Metroplex, with a relatively low cost of living. I just checked and starting salary at the closest In-N-Out Burger to my house is $12 per hour for a 16 year-old, which works out to about $2,080 per year. By comparison, an E-3 under two makes about that, but certainly gets a lot of other benefits. From a USA Today article, "But In-N-Out, the cult favorite fast food chain, sees its store managers earning over $160,000 on average." And that is without a college degree.

Just food for thought, the next time you have that old In-N-Out urge.

SGT Robert Pryor - you mean an In n out full time employee works 2080 hours per year (40 hrs week x 52 weeks per year) at $12/hr which is $24,960 gross before taxes, yes an E3 under two years will make a hair more than that at $25260 gross before taxes minus special pay, allowances, and pay in kind like a meal card and lodging. And independent of a 40 hrs week or a 168 hrs week.

LTC Jason Mackay - Yep, I was mixing yearly salary and annual salary -- sorry. The bottom line is, how long does someone without any college have to serve in the military until their annual salary reaches $160K? And unless the In-N-Out employee works in Southern California, they probably rarely get shot at on the job. In-N-Out does have some great employee benefits, such as a 401k. They pay far better than the rest of the industry as a means of reducing employee turnover. I believe that I read an article about a week or two ago saying Glassdoor had them rated one of the best employers in the USA -- maybe fourth. I still say someone in the military should be paid far more than a burger flipper at In-N-Out.