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Comment by applicative | Hacker News Reader

Primary Education (K–5): The U.S. spends 21% of its GDP per capita per student. This is exactly in line with the OECD average, which is also 21%.

Secondary Education (6–12): The U.S. spends 23% of its GDP per capita per student. This sits just slightly below the OECD average of 24%.

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We spend only 5% of our GDP on food, which is much lower than other OECD countries. Does it mean we are starving?

It probably means the quality of a lot of our food is inferior and we overly rely upon heavily industrialized production, overly processed foods and exploitative labor.

I think that the obesity rate is a lot higher in the US than a lot of other OECD countries, so people aren't starving but its hard to say their nutritionally thriving.

That could be more attributed to the income gap and concentration of wealth in the US as well.

How would obesity rate be related to “exploitive labor” or “income gap?” It seems like you’ve got a hammer and are looking for a nail.

Obesity rates don’t follow any predictable pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r.... The countries around the U.S. on the obesity scale are places like Egypt, Chile, Mexico, Saudi, etc. What do these countries have in common? Probably nothing other than idiosyncratic cuisine and lifestyle habits and maybe genetics (non-asian versus asian).

If you want to adjust for cost levels in different countries, you’d use a PPP adjustment: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-education-spending-p...

The U.S. is at $20k, well over the OECD average of $15k. O my Austria, Norway, and Luxembourg are higher.

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