Quality education and healthcare do not have economies of scale, so countries should be easily comparable. It's unlikely that as a country grows, the optimal c

Quality education and healthcare do not have economies of scale, so countries should be easily comparable. It's unlikely that as a country grows, the optimal class size increases or that a doctor is somehow able to treat a patient nx times faster than in a smaller country. Doesn't make sense on the most basic level. Defense does...sort of, but the US DoD is such a unique and unprecedented beast in human history that it's hard to make hard conclusions about it with n=1. a caveat to healthcare is that medical R&D probably does have economies of scale, but not routine treatments and healthcare.