Hello, friends,

Oh! Between when I started this and when I ended it, Pride Month began. Happy pride Month!

Last week, we talked about my thoughts on a recent trip to Upstate New York.

This week, I’m seizing upon a semi-recent conversation with my friend (and occasional TPC collaborator) Jamie, as well as a recently-announced plan by the U.K.’s Prime Minister Sunak to implement a national service program, to talk about…Well, what a national service program is.

As far the gist of what the Tories (AKA the Conservatives) want to put into place in the U.K., here’s a great little video by TLDR News, one of my favorite U.K. News sources.  I strongly urge you to watch that video because it serves as a major predicate to this conversation.

I also strongly urge you to subscribe to The Progressive Cafe so you can get Progressive ideas in your e-mail inbox darn near every week!  We’re up to 45 subscribers, so, consider joining up!

- Rishi Sunak, via Wikipedia.

What Is National Service?

It’s kind of what it sounds like:  It’s the idea that everyone can, or in some cases must, complete a period of time of service towards the country.  For many of you, the alarm bells are ringing:  “Is Jesse talking about a draft?”Ha.  Haha.  Hahahahahaha.  No.

National service means exactly what it sounds like:  Service to the nation.

In theory, that can mean any sort of service, limited only by the imaginations and willpower of the countries considering the program.  As we talk about this, let it be clear that nothing I propose should be considered to have been written in stone by some mysterious being near a burning bush.  Exceptions, exemptions, and all the like are totally on the table.

Yes, that service often comes in the form of a contract of military service.  In many European democracies, national military service is still a requirement - and that’s actually been re-expanding since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Latvia, for example, ended the requirement in 2007, then brought it back after Russia’s invasion.

In fact, in the United States, virtually all men (citizens and many categories of immigrant) (and, yes, Trans people assigned male at birth) from the age of 18-25 have to register for Selective Service, just in case there’s a military need that they must be called up for.  I had to do it, and if you didn’t, well, chances are that might come up some day so maybe fix that if you can.

But a program of national service can be so much more than a program of “you must join the military.”  In fact, not only could such a program help bridge the gap between school and career, it actually already does facilitate life stability in some capacity in the United States, we just don’t think of it that way.

What Is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program?

I mean, that’s answered by a government website, right?  In a nut shell, it’s the idea that if you enter into a public service career where you spend a certain amount of time working on behalf of the betterment of the country, some or all of your student loans that were issued through the government are forgiven.

The goal is to financially incentivise high-skilled workers (Teachers, lawyers, nurses, etc) to work in areas of critical need in order to get a chunk of their loans forgiven.

It is far from perfect.  You still have to make payments along the way, with your loan only forgiven after 120 qualifying monthly payments (ten years).  Not all not-for-profits or government entities count.  A career spread over multiple agencies might make it hard to collate all this data.

This article from 2018 by NPR’s Cory Turner does a good job of detailing just how some of these promises were - or weren’t - kept.  The program started in 2007, meaning by 2018 people were ready to start getting forgiveness.  In the early days of the first repayments, something along the lines of 99% of applications were denied.

Any guesses to who the President was, then?  And who he’d put in charge of the Education department?  Yeah.

That doesn’t mean things stayed that way.  On May 21st, 2024, the Biden administration announced billions more in relief from fixes to PSLF.  That’s one of the actually-kinda-good things he’s been doing, to be dead honest.

In other words, it’s a system that works when it’s allowed to work, but can easily be disrupted, delayed, or outright destroyed under the wrong circumstances and leadership.

But the goal is just:  It gets critical staff in high-needs places for a certain length of time that puts their skills to use, all while getting them critical on-the-ground experience to improve things.

So How Does That Reflect On A National Service Policy?

Consider that our nation has no small list of crises on its hands, and no easy way to fix them.

Consider I am one Human being who knows just enough to know he doesn’t know much, and even with a nice phone chat’s worth of cloud-castling about it, I won’t pretend I have all the answers.

But I’ll start with the idea of multiple-expressions-of-service.

Once someone graduates high school, and/or their trade schools (so college, plumbing school, etc etc),, they would be required to register (or be excused from) a national service program.  That service program can include military service, but can also include any number of career paths ideally related to their ideal.

So let’s say someone gets a certification as a licensed plumber, but decides they want to see the world and joins the navy.  Assuming they qualify to join the navy, they might be contracted to do plumbing-related work on a boat, or at a base, with an appropriate salary.

Key to this is that this service is paid.  One of the things that’s really lame about Rishi Sunak’s plan for the U.K. is, if I understand it right, that it’s non-military mandatory-but-only-punished-by-a-fine service work is all volunteer.

It is paid like any other professional’s work would be.

Maybe the plumber just wants to see the inside of the country.  That plumber might be offered to work in positions all across the nation where professional home-builders are scarce.  Salary might be tied to the region you’re in, so if you end up in New York where the cost of living is insanely high, you’d get a higher dollar value than you would if you were plumbing in the middle of nowhere.

You would serve a certain number of years - say, 2, which I believe is the shortest complete military contract for new enlistees? - in this position in what is essentially a paid high-needs-area internship.  You’ll learn the practical side of your trade, and you’ll get paid. What’s more to love?When you’re done, you’ll get two years of your school costs wiped out.  That, or - if you joined directly out of grade school - you will get credit for two years of college.

Another example is education.  If you get your teaching degree and need to complete your two  years of service, you just pick a high-needs school district and teach there.  You get a salary, plus you get your credit and that gets you two years of your college costs knocked off.

In this way, the national service-person gets…

Meanwhile, the government gets…

So How Do We Get This?

With politics so insane that a former President can be found guilty of 34 felonies and get his boots licked by the Speaker Of The House?  I don’t know.  Politically, it’s a huge ask.  It would likely require the Democrats to control the House, to have a large majority in the Senate willing and able to kill the Filibuster, and the Presidency all at once.

That means that whatever program that’s decided on, it would be ‘owned’ by the Democrats - and would be easily a vulnerability if it failed.

And I don’t pretend I have all the answers.  I’m a dude who had a few conversations and watched a few videos and said, “hey, here’s a better - not necessarily ready for prime time, just better - way to do this.

We don’t want this  to turn into a giveaway to private capital.  If workers were mandated to work for private employers, but paid by the government, that would lead pretty quickly to exploitation.  After all, the worker’s signed a contract to work this area for two years, and if that means being free extra labor for a massive contractor that does bad work, that’d be a problem.

At it’s best, this program could be a new version of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s CCC, essentially chasing after natural disasters and helping to rebuild all while educating students who would otherwise have no teacher whatsoever, all while getting nurses in high-needs areas that might otherwise be opposed.

At its worst, it gets perverted into some kind of indentured servitude with private profits on the top of the administration’s mind.

One other, very important difference from Rishi Sunak’s plan needs to be noted here:  If we’re talking a full-tilt national service project, everyone’s gotta be in.  While, yes, there might be exemptions for reasons such as disability - that is, if someone is physically unable to do any form of job - this wouldn’t be the sort of situation where you only pay a fine if you skip out.  That just makes it a law for the poor..

There would have to be some kind of consequences, though who decides what they are is another story.

I would love to hear what someone who has written a meta-analysis of various service programs, or is otherwise an expert on what they look like around the world has to say on the topic.  If you can think of anyone, let me know in the comments.

Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe.  If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list.  This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a former hyperlocal journalist and sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.