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Comment by silverquiet | Hacker News Reader

I've seen this sort of thing mentioned but I wonder, where does it leave people like me who had a childhood disability (Perthes disease - look it up, it's a disqualifying condition in the military's medical standards)? I get to be disabled for life and have to pay a tax for it?

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In Switzerland this system exists right now, it's an extra 3 percent income tax for 11 years. Some people with disabilities are exempt from the tax, but it is common to be deemed unfit for military service due to a disability, and have to pay the tax. It doesn't seem fair to me, but it seems the Swiss voters accept it.

Yes, disability is quite a spectrum. My issue is quite easily imaged via x-ray and is written down in black and white on the standards. I can imagine that mental health and potentially soft-tissue issues could be a bit harder to pin down.

I don’t know the exact law, but my understanding is most people who can work, don’t get the exemption, no matter how clear-cut the disability.

Correct. Good friend of mine couldn't do service due to a physical disability and paid it. He wasn't unhappy with it. His reasoning is that defending the country is a good thing and if you cannot do it yourself - for whatever reason - it's okay if you instead help by paying.

That’s quite a magnanimous attitude. As an American with some disability, I feel the need to save all the money I can while I am able to work in order to meet my inevitable healthcare needs where the social safety net is very thin. Perhaps Switzerland is different? Also, I do not feel like most of our military spending has served to make us safer in quite a while. Perhaps it that effort was focused more locally, it would be easier to accept.

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