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>The US can barely afford to school its children You're the richest nation on earth. You can afford it, the people who control the purse strings choose to use
by soperj 5y ago
>The US can barely afford to school its children
You're the richest nation on earth.
You can afford it, the people who control the purse strings choose to use it on other shit that benefits themselves.
- abeppu 5y agoWell, we also seem really bad at managing education. There has been a huge increase in the number of non-teaching staff (i.e. administration) in schools. At the same time that we wring our hands over class sizes, a growing proportion on dollars spent ostensibly on education go to stuff that doesn't happen in the classroom. We can "barely afford" stuff when we let a whole industry of nonessential stuff graft itself onto the thing we actually care about.
- peteradio 5y ago> You're the richest nation on earth* *On paper
- maxerickson 5y agoThe material abundance here is obvious, it's not just on paper.
- jachee 5y agoHow else does one track “richest” anything? On paper is what matters when counting wealth. That said, the gap between capability and actuality of spending that your parent comment is lamenting is the gap for that on-paper wealth not being used for real-world-improving actions, and instead being used to increase the on-paper wealth of a tiny minority of wealth-holders.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoHumor me, by what measure is the US the richest nation on earth, or even close? Anything per capita will be dominated by Monaco/other tax havens. Anything on a gross level will be dominated by China.
- kube-system 5y agoBy the most simple definition of the term: total wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wealth#Total_wealth_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wea...
- dataflow 5y agoWell if you have to pick something, the US has the highest GDP in the world.
- burkaman 5y agoBy net wealth (assets - liabilities). Here's a Wikipedia list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wea...) based on the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report (https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/global-wealth-report.html https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/g...). You're right that it's not even close, the US is almost twice as rich as China in the #2 spot.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoAdd in underfunded liabilities and lets see what it shows us. Of course if a country doesn't require all liabilities to be counted it's going to show up at the top of the list.
- triceratops 5y agoThere are large countries (India, China). There are rich countries (Germany, Japan, the UK). The US is the only large, rich country.