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A comment on Understanding Foreign Interference [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:Understanding Foreign Interference [pdf] by alamortsubite on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @10:34AM (#21060594)
Yeah, but the absolute numbers in that table are misleading. Any society whose budget for education is far outpaced by its budgets for mind-numbing entertainment and propaganda is sure to be full of morons. Rewrite those expenditures as a percentage of GDP and you'll paint a wildly different picture.
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Re:Understanding Foreign Interference [pdf] by leetcrew on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @02:02PM (#21062936)
well there's always a way to flip numbers around to make your position stronger. PPP adjusted spending per student seems pretty reasonable to me.

is there a reason why education spending in particular should be reported as a fraction of GDP? if you look at US military spending as a fraction of GDP, it's pretty unremarkable.

to me the numbers paint a pretty clear picture. the US already spends more to educate each student than most OECD countries. whatever the solution is to the problem, it's probably not to just throw more money at it.

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Re:Understanding Foreign Interference [pdf] by scottlocklin on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @11:25AM (#21061169)
I guess you didn't scroll down far enough to notice they did put those expenditures as a percentage of GDP and it doesn't paint a wildly different picture.
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Re:Understanding Foreign Interference [pdf] by alamortsubite on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @11:57AM (#21061533)
No, it lists them a percentage of GDP <i>per capita</i>. Education doesn't scale like infotainment and advertising.
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Re:Understanding Foreign Interference [pdf] by scottlocklin on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @01:41PM (#21062672)
You misread the chart: it plots GDP/capita vs $$ spent per student. You have to normalize it with your eyeball. And it doesn't matter; you can normalize it any way you want: the US spends more than almost any other industrialized country per student, whether raw or by % GDP.

If you think the US is a nation of dumbasses because of infotainment expenses and advertising, perhaps you have some evidence for this?

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Re:Understanding Foreign Interference [pdf] by Udik on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @01:38PM (#21062652)
Can you explain?
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