1. Limited if any employment opportunities.

2. Should they find employment, lower pay than they had been led to expect for the skill sets they’ve acquired.

3. Less credit to get themselves and their families up and running.

4. A large dose of the personal and family strife that’s an inevitable result of struggling to make ends meet.

5. Less of a government support system, whether on the federal, state, or local level, as massive decreases in tax revenues cause cutbacks in what used to be considered essential services.

Politicians used to admonish anti-war protesters with the retort that the soldiers overseas were fighting to protect the right of those same protesters to voice their dissent.

This time around, the troops fought for the hedge fund managers and their right to greedily abuse the system. They fought for the politicians and their right to build bridges to nowhere. They fought to maintain the Treasury’s right to devalue the few dollars GI Joe and Jane have in their pockets.

Soldiers of misfortune.

Re-enlistments may rise as soon as those awaiting discharge realize that the easiest way to assure 3 squares a day and a warm cot is to put their lives on the line on a regular basis.