Who was it that argued in congress that the United States could save money by paying every man, woman and child in North Vietnam $70k a year not to fight instead of dropping napalm on them? The United States has some puritanically stupid ideas about incarceration. My experiences with Youngluck were a fuckin' Red Pill.
- 40m people in Vietnam, 1968 - $352B spent on Vietnam War Call it 1964 to 1972, since it was sort of open-ended on both sides, and it's eight years. Over that period, we spent $1100 per year per inhabitant of Vietnam (north and south) "policing" North Vietnam. Could be worse - we're (arguably) at $50m per Taliban killed and during the Iraq War, we fired off 250,000 bullets for every enemy casualty. Dunno about you, but I've watched my friends pay $40 for a box of 20 5.56N. At $2/round, that's $500k per rebel just in FMJ.