For every one person that's currently been able to get a new contract under the LOGCAP contract doing stuff at KAF, in the year 2018, there's 19 unemployed people who used to be $160k contractors at KAF who are back in CONUS working ordinary civilian jobs at normal employee rates. Many of them in places where salaries are a lot lower than you would see in California, where you can buy a 3BD house for $130k, somewhere in middle america. Saying that people are working for $30k jobs at Waffle House may be a rhetorical flourish of exaggeration, but it's not very far off the mark if you look at the number of people who used to make $120-165k for Dyncorp who are now working for small town police or sheriffs departments in Kansas or Minnesota, as ordinary cops, for $40-50k.
The US presence in Iraq is presently about 3% to 5% of the size of what it used to be, both in active duty military personnel and number of US-citizen contractors. In Afghanistan, about 5-10% of what it was at its peak. This is why people who used to work for organizations like Dyncorp, ITT-Exelis, Blackwater, Triple Canopy, PAE and others are now going to work for even more shady contracting organizations based in Dubai (like Erik Prince's new company), and end up doing weird things in Yemen, ultimately under the command of the Saudi and UAE militaries.
You should go read some more before you comment, because everything in your post from, prior-military career prospects to the way untaxed income works, is wrong.