What if a Soldiers pay incentivizes a soldier to stay without ever having to be promoted? Well it would take a re-organization of how the military is organized to do it.
Status Quo: Currently soldiers are organized on a complex rank system. This includes non commissioned officers (NCO's) then warrant officers (WO's) and finally commissioned officers (CO's). Do to the want and need to keep soldiers inside the military the ranks in the WO and CO category have become top heavy with instances of officers in a command position, but with no men to command. The only exception to this happens to be the Marines as they have more NCO's leading Squads than they do CO's, but they do suffer from this problem to a degree as well. This is in part due to pay being linked to rank. However, there are other forms of pay like combat pay and specialist pay, but the main pay comes via rank.
The alternative: Pay soldiers based on how long they stay. So say you have a recruit (you pay him/her $20,000 during their one year of basic training), when that recruit goes into their second year in the military their pay rises to $30,000 for staying. Then after about 2 additional years their pay goes up by $5,000 which culminates to them getting $40,000 dollars a year after about 5/6 years. Then if they move up in rank they get an additional bump and the pay goes up again. This continues all the way up allowing the grunts to get significant amount of money without any need to move up in rank. But if they do, then they automatically get the new base pay of that rank plus the increases in pay. So a recruit after 5 years has a $40,000 a year salary at which time it is frozen, but a Corporal has a $45,000 a year base which will increase to $60,000 after all the increments in pay increases. So they still have the incentive to move up. But, a new recruit that shows promise can be promoted earlier on and jump from that $25,000 to that of a Corporals $45,000 base pay if they are promoted. So the financial incentive to stay is there while the incentive to move up in rank is maintained. Of course the pay is increased with changes to the dollar due to inflation.
To make it work: An entire re-organization of the rank structure would have to occur. You would have recruits followed by Corporals which would be followed by Sergeant’s (their top pay being $80,000). The traditional roles in the military would not change however. Warrant Officers would be deleted from the military as the intention would be to make such positions redundant. Then you go into the Officers. With Lieutenants (top pay $100,000), Captains (top pay $120,000), Majors (top pay $140,000) and finally Generals (top pay $160,000). Under this system all the pay increases are included. A Lieutenants role remains the same, but a Captain's and a Majors role becomes more involved with respect to leadership. Generals will be the war planners like always. The heads of each branch of each service will be Commandants and get a top salary of $180,000. So we loose all those other ranks and the complicated functions of the promotion system in favor of a simpler system. Also, this system would require that promotions will only occur if a spot is available, thus eliminating the top heaviness of the current military with respect to Warrant and Commissioned officers.
Conclusion: This is an idea. It is not meant to be much more than an academic exercise in looking for ways to incentivize soldiers to stay in the armed forces longer, and eliminate the top heaviness of the military with respect to too many people in the warrant and commissioned officers classification. It would also follow that a harmonization of the Uniforms and rank system between the branches of service would also occur. The biggest fear though would be the loss of the individuality of each service and thus if this idea was ever seriously considered then it would be vehemently opposed. As such this is why it is an academic exercise and nothing more (although in the long run it may actually save the tax payers money). Keep brainstorming ideas everyone as when you come up with an idea that works, it may just change the world) though mine will probably sit on the back burner for a while.
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