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Comment by readthenotes1 | Hacker News Reader

"Small increases in foreign aid could go a long way"

Unfortunately, his graph of polio results would indicate the opposite.

It's similar, in my mind, to school spending in Chicago and Baltimore correlates to educational outcomes:

When the problem needs both a systemic change and broad-based endemic change, more money is not necessarily the answer.

(For Afghanistan/Pakistan, it's to counter the anti-vaxx narratives that caused the program to stall out. For those school systems, it may start with food and shelter security for students)

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Adding more money to government-run K–12 education can sometimes work against meaningful reform. Increased funding typically grows the existing system: hiring more staff, expanding departments, and creating additional layers of bureaucracy.

More people come to rely on the status quo for their livelihood, which can reduce their willingness to support or even consider transformative changes.

Funding for education in America has increased by leaps and bounds, but K-12 educational attainment hasn't budged.

It about doubled over half a century. For comparison inflation over that period was 410% or something like that. So idk, it's bigger than it was, it's hard to say whether it's bigger than it should be. I probably wouldn't describe it as dramatically as you have but that's often the case between us with public services I think.

See https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

Educational spending per pupil has gone up in real terms, by about 2.5x over 40 years. This is already inflation adjusted so there isn't any comparison to the inflation rate. I'd say a 2.5x increase is pretty dramatic!

I'm not "seeing" a neo-segregationist about school funding policy lol nice try though.

But anyway hasn't the GDP and accumulated wealth of the nation increased much more over that length of time? How much of that new wealth is it appropriate to spend on education?

Name calling isn't an argument.

It might be appropriate to spend a lot on education, if there were a benefit! But as you can see in the first chart, its not at all obvious that all this increased spending has had any measurable positive effect.

This isn't debate club I'm not trying to win an argument. If I was calling him names I'd have much fouler ones tho.

I find there are benefits to spending on education! What would you prefer to do with that money?

I also find there are benefits to spending (on my) education. But if we can't show benefit for a specific kind of public spending, is it justified to take other's money and spend it on "education" in a way which has no measurable impact? I don't think so.

In WA state, per student spending has way, way outpaced inflation.

That polio graph is depressingly flat for the past quarter century :-(

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