Although there are differences between military and civil armed service, there is no reason that the military veteran “deserves” a discount. (I’m a vet and I don’t deserve it and would never consider demanding it). Police officers have something else in common with the military: as politics change, they are held in high esteem or spat upon and called baby killers in exchange for their honorable service to the country or their neighborhood. The pendulum always swings though. Those who are honored will soon be reviled and vice versa.

I believe the police officer who serves honorably should be honored and respected. I’m not sure the best way to honor them is to give a 10% discount, but if I were still a business owner I would be honored to give them and all the emergency medical and fire workers the same discount. Honestly, it’s tax deductible and can be written off as promotional expenses (advertising). When I was a restaurant manager, I would offer to “comp” the meals of the police officers that ordered food from us. They almost always said, “no thanks, we’re not allowed.” I appreciated when police officers in uniform ate at my restaurants in tougher parts of town (in Seattle) and would gladly buy them all the food they could eat, since they were a deterrent to the thugs.

For private sector jobs (non-military), the death rate for men is more than 10 times the death rate for women. Jobs with high death rates tend to be occupied by mostly men.

Women whine about the wage gap. How about the death gap? Does not the risk of death merit extra pay?

People working in fields with a high death rate should get reparations.

In wars, it's the men that die.

In the Titanic disaster, most men died and most women survived.

Howdy @Serg97,

I was in the Corps in a time of ostensible peace. In that 'peaceful' period one of the guys in my recon company died when his parachute failed, an entire recon team was lost in the waters off Okinawa, we lost a battalion headquarters in Lebanon (some of the people I trained with), and a friend of mine was lost in an ambush in San Salvador. That's just my dogs-eye view. There were a lot of other skirmishes that did not make the papers. 'Peace' is not all that peaceful in this current world of ours.

So I would not discount the service of the wrench turners and truck drivers. They might not all be steely eyed killers, but they were all targets.

"veterans discounts" is really a cynical marketing ploy. The companies who offer veteran discounts get to signal virtue, patriotism, loyalty...rah rah rah - but not always of course.

As for the value of actually seeing combat, as with your years of policing, it is complicated by the problematic mission, sent from on high as CuriousFury mentioned. And there are of course those who relish that mission. Many are exploited as well.

From my experience, the "just people that were in the military during one of our many conflicts" are the most likely to make a big deal out of their service, even if they did everything they could to scam their way out of doing anything of importance.

that is a tough one. complex. political.

sadly funny, since both are armed force and both are just following orders written by polititians.

probably has more to do with inability to choose where you live, uprooting family every couple years or so.

phantoms of past wars, and using police forces on the people, while using armed force on other people.

i almost never ask for veteran discount, and when i do it is because someone in my family wants to save money.