• testfactor@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I’d be super on board for this. Treat it similarly to the military, where room and board are provided, and they ship you to an underserved part of the country to help.

    Especially if we extended the GI Bill to cover participating. Like, do 4 yrs and you get full tuition covered at any public university.

    I think it would really promote national unity and help to lift people out of poverty. You’d have people from all over the country working together, bridging a lot of our internal divisions. You’d get people out of their bubbles and echo chambers and have them actually seeing the country.

    If we could normalize it, where it’s just what people did after highschool, it would give people time to figure their lives out. Remove the pressure of having to choose a career right away. I know so many people who “had to go to college” because that was the next step, but didn’t have a clue what they wanted in life, so got useless majors and have dead ended. This would be perfect for people like that.

    Plus infrastructure in the US is a joke. And even as the OP implies, farming is a broken business in the US for a number of reasons. There are never enough people working soup kitchens and food pantries, or cleaning up our national forests to prevent forest fires. If we could mobilize our young people en masse, we could make a huge difference in this country.

    I’m 1000% on board.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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      3 months ago

      Yeah that’s all fine but it’s blocked by one of two major political parties in the US doesn’t believe government should exist. At best they’d support a privatized version of the that siphoned money out and didn’t help people that need help.

      We’re going to struggle to get anything done as long as conservatives are treated as if they have any merit.

      • testfactor@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        No, I think that’s actually the beauty of this. The OP meme is a right wing meme. A national civil service is a right wing position.

        I think there’s a way to craft this program in a hugely bipartisan way. You get all the “patriotism, one nation, farms and country” stuff the right wants, and all the “infrastructure improvements, social safety nets, free college” stuff the left wants.

        I think there’s a real potential to get some solid bipartisanism here.