[massgrunt]

This is ridiculous. I made a whopping $900 a month as a private, and $1600 four years later. I took a steep pay cut when I joined, and a huge pay raise (making $14 an hour doing construction, not exactly a king's ransom) when I got out. I came ome from a six month deployment on combat pay and tax exemption with a grand total of about $10K. You wouldn't want to live like we did (navy ships, roof tops and piles of dirt, MREs, shitting your brains out for weeks) for that amount of money.

The idea that the military is overcompensated is just insane.