Jobs guarantee competes with “livable wage” offers for military service.

But even breaking down the numbers further, a jobs guarantee could look a lot like the military in execution: an expense we deem necessary and that doesn't require some sort of elaborate pay-for when it needs expansion.

Breaking it down

As a better comparison, let's dig into how a jobs guarantee would look compared to what the US already pays for the military.

First, pay. An E-1 (private, seaman recruit, or airman basic for the Army, Navy, and Air Force respectively) earns a monthly pay rate of $1,680.90 in 2020. Basic allowance for subsistence (BAS) adds $372.71. Breaking that down into typical workers' hours at 40 hours a week and four weeks a month, that total works out to $12.83 per hour; hourly wages would be lower under higher workloads, but also keep in mind this is the absolute minimum pay for very junior military personnel, not an overall average.

By the E-4 pay grade (specialist or corporal, petty officer third class, or senior airman for the Army, Navy, and Air Force respectively; typically reached within a few years) military enlisted are earning more than the $15 per hour that so many minimum wage activists have deemed the "livable wage" in recent years.

In other words, the government is already openly bidding for a material chunk of the non-college youth labor force at $13 to $15 an hour. Our all-volunteer military doesn't have a cap in terms of recruitment and generally struggles to get the numbers it needs. Granted, the job description comes with substantial risk of physical harm and a benefits package that has let down soldiers in recent years. But is the basic labor-bid function really that different from a jobs guarantee?