Another comment mentions land grants and swords to plows in antiquity. Lots of those vets weren’t super happy with the offering at the time since it moved them out to the frontiers where they’d feel less threatening to the republic, sure, but idk, a actual land grant seems better than token assistance of a loan for housing that remains pretty unaffordable.

Education assistance is more substantial maybe, but then again that’s something much of the civilized world enjoys without the threat of being blown up by ieds far from home in a pointless conflict.

Indeed though, let’s not lose perspective, let’s take a hard honest look at things and ask ourselves whether we’re doing better or worse.

The military is one of the best available options to lift people up out of poverty and give them a better chance at life, and it always has been. but it’s also a chance at no life at all, and so if people are forced into making this desperate bargain then it is disgraceful and reflects badly on what we’ve actually accomplished with all the time since antiquity.

Veterans in countries with free college and health care for all, such as Australia or many European countries have it better still, as they receive their veterans benefits, while allowing those who did not or could not serve to also live free from undue burden or peril.

I do take your point, though, and don’t protest too much. It’s less a matter of how much is enough for our veterans, but rather, how far we have left to go, one and all. In many ways, veterans simply arrived at the limits of political capital before the rest of us, and now that the problems veterans face are similarly butting up against many if not all in some form or fashion, we have economic capital concerns in the form of UBI that has become the stalking horse for larger structural issues largely left unaddressed facing us all.