Ask not our youth to do national service – what has the nation done for them?

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John Rapley is an author and academic who divides his time among London, Johannesburg and Ottawa. His books include Why Empires Fall (Yale University Press, 2023) and Twilight of the Money Gods (Simon and Schuster, 2017).

Somehow, right around the 80th anniversary of D-Day, national service has made its way back onto the political agenda. British Conservative Leader Rishi Sunak floated the idea in that country’s election campaign, and the idea has been picked up by some Canadian commentators.

Promoted as a way to instill a greater sense of civic duty in a young generation seen to be detached from society, it could even offer some solutions to Canada’s economic problems.

We actually know a fair bit about the economics of patriotism. Where people feel strongly attached to their society, trust and voluntary compliance rise, which can both raise productivity and reduce transaction costs, boosting output. However, as the issue is being framed right now, it’s probably putting the cart before the horse.

If you think of government as a social contract, by and large, people put into it what they perceive themselves to be getting out of it. To illustrate, a recent article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics looked at the impact that the New Deal had on patriotism in the United States.

What it found was that when the U.S. government expanded its largesse after 1933, those who benefited most tended to be those who showed the most patriotism during the Second World War – volunteering more, buying more war bonds, and showing more heroism in battle (as measured by the number of medals they earned). As the authors of the article put it, the New Deal created new patriots.

That new foundation provided the basis of the U.S.’s postwar social contract, mirroring similar evolutions across the West. This was the age in which governments extended universal pensions, health care and free education to their societies, and in which social assistance was provided to citizens in times of hardship or unemployment.

The broad contours of that social contract were clear: If you worked hard and played by the rules, paying your taxes and respecting the laws, you’d get ahead and be able to buy a home and start a family, prosper in your job, then retire comfortably.

Fast forward to the present day, though, and for younger Canadians, the social contract is looking frayed. They must pay more for their education and, to guarantee a good job, get a lot more of it. Even then, the work may be insecure.

Buying a house looks out of reach unless they can draw upon family money. Starting a family has become more expensive, taxes will all but certainly rise in their lifetimes and any young person is entitled to doubt if they’ll ever draw a pension as generous as what retired people get today. To top it all off, they will have to cope with the damaging effects of climate change, a problem they did comparatively little to cause.

So you can’t quite blame young people for wondering what’s in it for them. Older Canadians sometimes point out that today’s youth enjoy better lives than they did when they were young.

The food is better now, you can get a decent cup of coffee or choose from a much wider variety of drinkable beer, international travel is much cheaper and easier, many more health conditions are treatable and mental health, which in their day was largely swept under the carpet, is now taken seriously. All of which is true, but also beside the point: Those benefits are available to everyone, not the result of some special generosity showered on young people.

In any event, one can argue that young people have already demonstrated a high willingness to make sacrifices for the good of society, namely during the pandemic. When COVID-19 hit, it soon became apparent that without lockdowns, the vulnerable and elderly could suffer terribly. Young people were at much less risk, though. Had the country then chosen to prioritize their well-being, it would have avoided lockdowns and let the virus run riot.

Instead, the country took the noble decision to protect those in society who then needed it most. The burden that imposed on young people was, however, heavy: compromised educations; isolation at the very stage of life where social interaction is the most important to personal development; and interrupted career starts, something that research shows can permanently hobble a person’s advancement in life. Some are still paying the price.

Nevertheless, young people paid it, and for the most part did so without significant complaint. So before asking what more young Canadians can do for their country, the country might want to ask what more it might do for them.

Otherwise, it risks losing them, as a growing number of young Canadians are emigrating and surveys suggest many more are thinking of it. A labour exodus would undermine the tax system, deepen the country’s economic woes and probably drain the country of brain power, worsening its productivity woes.

National service alone won’t solve that.