"...In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back..."
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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Lolwtf? When I was in, they'd take a couple hundred off your paycheck for barracks and food, and you just scan your id. No variable pricing, go back up to the line as many times as you like.
Lmfao wait you have to pay for your own food in the military? I thought room & board was one of the selling points
The selling point is actually killing brown people far far away.
It is, but it comes out of your paycheck... Which is given an extra allotment for room and board... Look, economics is complicated, you wouldn't understand.
So let me get this straight, the army charges you for your food and gives you a special extra bit of money specifically to pay for the food they're making you buy from themselves?
You're right, I really don't understand
You gotta go to school for accounting and economics sweaty.
there's so much graft in the US mil apparatus, none of the allocation ever seems to reach the bottom. i remember when all those stories came out where like soldiers in iraq had family back home organize fund raising to get like body armor and basic shit.
the administration dismissed the obvious contradiction of trillions going missing as "you go to war with the army you've got not the army you want".
the war machine is a paper tiger. it has just enough bombs and ammunition to discourage disorganized resistance, but there is no meat left on the bone. its all gobbled up by the hogs.
Back in my day, your pay was auto deducted every 2~4 weeks to pay for the dining facilities. This was pulled out, even if you didn't eat at the dining facilities. There was/is paperwork to get reimbursed if you are unable to get to a dining facility when in garrison (and not training out in the field) but most of us never bothered with it. I think when doing training/deployments and being fed, the dining facility deduction was stopped but I can't remember with any certainty.
I think when doing training/deployments and being fed, the dining facility deduction was stopped but I can't remember with any certainty.
They typically just shifted which entity received the money instead.
So the government is doing company script for army? That isnt a good look when you mint the real currency
bit idea: crypto rugpull version of the Bonus Army
(meant to reply to this one but messed up so... DOUBLE POST 
BLAM BLAM)
My thoughts exactly. Making a company town with company script when you yourself are the government. It's peak levels of braindeath.
But hey, maybe they want people to be stuck in debt to the military with only savings in a currency usable only within the military.
You kill 16 kids and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper im debt
Satan dont take me cause I cant go
I owe my soul to the company store
bit idea: crypto rugpull version of the Bonus Army
Damn, they're forcibly taking $39 out of their paychecks for food per day?
and
If soldiers do want more food than the $39 will cover, they “can choose to pay out of pocket for what they go over,”
so there really is no reason to force the exchange to fake money anyway 
The point is that Uncle Sam is taking $13 from each soldier 3x a day and there is nothing they can do about it
This is such a petty expense to be trying to claw back like this. There is no way that the military, with its economy of scale, is spending more than it takes per soldier for chow hall food - all this does is add another thing that the solders have to stress over, when the whole point of the military social democracy thing is insulating the troops from the negative effects of capitalism to ensure their loyalty + keep them focused on their job.
It's not a very long walk from this to charging rent for a barracks room.
Wait until you hear about PPV housing and basic allowance for housing (BAH). They already do this for the privilege of living in the equivalent of a “luxury” apartment instead of a moldy barracks room.
That is hilarious. Worst army
This reminds me of that one executive that tried to turn Sears into an internal economy with its own currency and different divisions and departments had to pay other divisions and departments. Some freak at the Pentagon saw that the cafeteria system was not enough of a market economy and mandated this bullshit
This happened at our local university but without the new currency and it has made everything worse. The starting point was not good, so they had to work especially hard to make it this bad.
Is the US about to find out what happens when you don't pay your soldiers?
i really really hope so
come on ghosts of Smedley Butler and Evans Carlson you have some haunting to do
retvrn to tradition where the tradition is Cardinal Richelieu's 'the army will feed itself' doctrine of looting food to survive
In this episode of Collapse of an Empire....What happens when you don't feed your muscle?
"freedom" dollars, really? god they are running that word into the ground. like just call it meal bucks or some shit. its a cafeteria on base in texas, not some jerk-me-off fob in central asia.
this is so stupid, it's absurd.
America has been a self-parody for a while now the way they label everything as Freedom™ X
There were two bald eagles in some national called freedom and liberty. I wanted to barf
Star(s and stripes)bucks
They will be called 'freddies' colloquially.
what you dont understand is that you can use five slurp juices on each of your freedom bucks to increase their freedom value
I'm sure scalping your own grunts on petty dailies is great for longevity of your empire.
Okay, so instead of walking through a line and being handed a plate of food during the three times a day that the dining halls are open... you have to slow everything down to think about how much "freedom bucks" you're spending per item, per meal. And if you guess wrong, slow down the lines even more to pull out cash or debit/credit card to pay the remainder if you go over.
With an "all day" chow hall, I expect the amount of food waste will be increased dramatically.
There should be an "The Onion" article about the troops being charged for every gallon of fuel and bullet fired.
There should be an “The Onion” article about the troops being charged for every gallon of fuel and bullet fired.
Why do you think captains traditionally go down with a ship?
Who's ready for an indentured servitude-based military?
Service guarantees citizenship
But it doesn't, this has come up a few times recently
And citizenship does not entitle you to work, healthcare, housing, or food. Now get back to work!!
didn't they just allocate a trillion fucking dollars to their military
That money obviously isn't for feeding people
that's like 4 planes
$39 a day out of their paychecks for a college-style meal plan? So we are bilking our soldiers $1000+ a month so they can eat slop
E1 soldiers earn about $14/hr in base pay so this is straight up taking 3 hours a day of work out of their pocket. I know they get like $450/month for feeding themselves, but it's less than half of what this Freedom deduction costs overall.
And they typically work 12+ hours a day. No OT.
Junior enlisted typically don’t actually see the BAS (basic allowance for sustenance). Everyone living on the base and/or assigned to a unit associated with a dining facility typically has it taken out of their check before they see it and the money goes straight to the entity providing meal service, whether or not they use it or have the opportunity to eat at the facilities during meal hours (the latter is against policy but always happens). There has been a lot of reporting over the last decade or so on the US military not bothering to make sure their goons are fed properly or housed in decent (mold free) living conditions, which I’m assuming the DOD paid some McKinsey freaks a ton of money to come up with this solution they will inevitably botch b
That is amazing. I make 6 dollars an hour more than the troops as a cook, I also get about $350 per pay cycle in tips and can est whatever I want from work. Also no one ever has tried to kill me with a gun at work. These guys are being treated worse than a cook.
Champing at the bit for a Freedom Fries pun but I'm too dumb for a good one.
Freedom Dollars
Is that like Monopoly money?