New study shows grim outlook for future of Air Force pilot shortage

> I've never seen any popular candidates talk about changing the voting systems.

Popular candidates are the ones that get elected. By definition. So yes, trying to push forward better candidates supported by a party the support of which will automatically raise their profile is the way to fix the problem. Plus, as noted, voting for the changes you want (including reforming voting & districting, if that's your thing) at levels closer to home, where non-big-two candidates or oddballs within the big two might actually win.

How have we reformed elections in the past, against the wishes of entrenched, powerful groups? Replace or win over one of the big two parties (the latter is easier—the former's rarely worked) and push your candidates forward. The Democrats have a strong incentive right now to get rid of gerrymandering, for instance. There are local and state level movements to reform voting—it's mostly a state-level issue—so try to get some initiatives on the ballot. Work with that. One step at a time. Voting Green or Libertarian or whatever for President or Senator's simply pointless, good feels aside—though only barely more pointless than any other vote for a federal office, under the current system. It just doesn't matter.

Feel good, or get something done? For the former, keep on voting however you like. For the latter, work to change the ballot. Initiatives/referendums and influencing candidate selection in the big two. You can try other stuff, but those are the first things you should look at if you're serious about getting things done.

The basic principles are 1) the earlier you're involved in the process (e.g. influencing who's running, what's on the ballot) the more effective you're likely to be, 2) the more you're swimming downstream the better (if you can work in one of the big two, 100% you should), and 3) the smaller scale the election, the more likely you can affect the outcome (obviously).

I'm kinda surprised that anyone still believes this, although politicians do say it all the time.

What actually happens is that people pay a tax. The tax goes towards covering people who are currently receiving payouts. The collected tax does not cover the payouts and has not for quite a while. In other words, you're not "paying in" to anything, other than that if you pay the tax for 3 years, you're eligible to receive benefits.

And the payouts are a really bad investment if you are a Gen Xer or younger. You're going to get a lot less out than you put in.

It was a really great deal for the WW2 gen, as they paid in hardly anything and got decades of payouts.

You can only pick the ones you're qualified for, and the special operations jobs all require pre-approval to retain into. Similar with aircrew, if you want an aircrew job you have to get medically qualified before you can select it. If you don't pick a new job you just don't get to re-enlist. They don't force you into a job you don't want as far as I'm aware. I'm sure they have the authority (and your agreement when you signed the enlistment paperwork) to do so if they really needed to, but when I went through they just gave you a re-enlistment eligibility code that would prevent you from serving beyond your current obligation if you declined the jobs they selected for you. I'm sure it'd put you high on the list for force shaping if that was going on, too.

E: forgot special duties were an option, too. If you applied for and were selected to be something like an MTI, MTL, or recruiter then you didn't have to retrain. I'm not sure what would happen after the special duty was done. Usually you would return to your career field once you're done, but I don't know if that's the case if you do the special duty to avoid NCORP retraining.