You make a lot more than that when you consider your other benefits, such as basic housing allowance, medical, retirement, life insurance and all the other crap. My friend is in the air national guard in long island and he gets paid an extra 2k+ just for living out there; i think it might be 2.3k a month, which is tax free. Is it enough? Who knows, they own you while you're in- you work, sleep, eat and **** when they tell you.
I see the purpose of a union but sometimes they get out of control. For instance, while I was in the military I had to work with civilians that were part of the union, these civilians got everything they wanted. Whenever there was overtime, guess who worked? Guess who got the shifts no one wanted? Yes, the military. Whenever there needed to be some kind of restructuring that effected the civilians it had to go through them- which was everything because we worked with them. I was making around 30k a year with everything, bah and basic pay and these guys were getting paid 80-90k a year- the incentive to put the military on overtime shifts instead of civilians is clear- from their perspective.
I think Chrysler should fail, obviously their business structure is not working, money is being spent irresponsibly left and right. Let some other company come in, pick up the pieces, and start over. Yes, it will cost jobs but I would rather see people lose jobs than failing large business firms similar to Chrysler being constantly bailed out through the government. In the long run, I think this will be most beneficial. Then again, if I was a CEO getting paid millions and millions of dollars for doing a mediocre job, I would definitely want the government to continue to support failing businesses.