Ms. Williams, I must strongly disagree...

I just finished reading a post from a midshipman about our newly appointed assistant director for national security, and boy am I fired up. Assuming what was in the post is true, she believes our servicemen and women do not deserve a pay raise and that they are being paid quite enough. There was a response from a guy in the air force. He is currently getting paid a little over $13,000 a year, where guys in Washington D.C. with the same job and experience (network technician) would get between $70,000-80,000. I don't understand how this can be getting paid too much. (I know, I'm very opinionated and a sucker for anything military). But, how can anyone say that a person who is WILLING TO DIE FOR YOU is getting paid too much? I know that I could never do what our servicemen and women do. I am not cut out for it. I have the utmost respect for these people, a few who I have the pleasure of knowing. And, on top of that, I just researched the poverty threshold in the U.S. For a single person under 65 (in 2009), an income of $11,161 was the threshold. The serviceman was only making $2,000 over the poverty level! Okay, $2,000 sounds like a lot, but when you think about lower middle class income being about $30,000, it really isn't that much. I could keep going on, but I'm ranting and raving. And I can't quite think coherently.