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Sweden's Costly Military Ads Failing to Attract Volunteers
[Sputnik] Since Sweden became the first Nordic country to abolish conscription six years ago, a total of 437 million SEK ($51 million) has been spent on advertising, Swedish trade magazine Resumé reported. Nevertheless, the Swedish Armed Forces currently lack over 7,400 soldiers, which constitutes roughly a third of the total number of active soldiers.In the first year after conscription was abolished, the Swedish Defense maintained an advertising budget of a whopping 100 million SEK ($12 million). Subsequently, the budget for advertising was cut down somewhat, yet hovered nevertheless at around SEK 60 million in recent years ($7 million). Last week, government investigator Annika Nordgren Christensen presented a proposal to reintroduce some form of conscription. The new model was described as a mixture of goodwill and duty, where the number of people obliged to serve would depend on the volume of standard recruits available. Accordingly, motivation is seen as a key factor to arouse interest among Swedish citizens in military service. In recent years, the Swedish Armed Forces have been blamed for failure to offer adequate incentives for military service. Today, there is widespread dissatisfaction among Swedish soldiers with the starting salary of 18,000 SEK ($2,000) per month, which is 2,000 SEK ($200) lower than that of a supermarket cashier. Another problem for professional soldiers in Sweden is that employment contracts are limited to eight years, in a bid to prevent "isolation from society." This makes Swedish servicemen look for employment elsewhere before long, Jimmy Olson noted. The Armed Forces marketing department is so far cautious not to draw any conclusions about what the comeback of the draft could possibly imply. Posted by: Pappy 2016-10-05 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=469350 |