Chris Springer
Email: christopher.springer@marshallcenter.org
Chris Springer is a US Army Major who received his commission from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1997. He served as an artilleryman in the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vicenza, Italy, and went on to command an artillery battery in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Upon earning his degree in Master of Business Administration from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, he went on to become an assistant professor in economics at the United States Military Academy. He also holds a degree in certified financial planning and is published in this field. In 2008, Major Springer deployed to Iraq and served as a special assistant and economic advisor to the 1st Armored Division. He is currently assigned as the senior strategist for the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, where he also teaches an elective course called International Political Economy. Since 2005, he has presented on economics in several countries. Major Springer is a graduate of US Army Ranger, Jumpmaster, Airborne and Air Assault schools.
Papers Published in World Economics:
It’s Time to Retire the US Military’s Retirement System
The author outlines a retirement system for the most expensive government organisation in the world – the US military. The plan incorporates positive aspects of both defined benefit and defined contribution plans that cost less and are more valuable to service members than the current system, which was put into place in 1947. The paper uses previous studies that reflect service members’ ‘value’ of retirement pensions and US Department of Defense net present value assumptions to prove his case and demonstrate how the DoD can save tens of billions of US dollars, while increasing the value of the plan in the eyes of those who serve.
This paper builds on previous work done in 2006, when the author wrote a paper titled ‘Is It Time to Update the Army’s Retirement System?’. However, this paper focuses more broadly on the overall military retirement system and takes into account the changes that have occurred since 2006 regarding the general debate on retirement pensions, the macroeconomic conditions that have changed drastically in four years, the political reality of future government budget cuts (such as with the military retirement system), and the fact that anything related to military compensation being a target because US military benefits (primarily health care, pay, and bonuses) have increased steadily over the years since 2001.
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