Doing the Numbers

I am in the Ryan Library at Point Loma and just walked by the magazines and saw the latest issue of "The Christian Century" on the shelf. The cover story is "Bono on a Mission," which sounded intriguing so I picked it up. A few pages in I came across an interesting chart.

It's called "Doing the Numbers" and is a chart from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about the percentage of gross domestic product spent on public expenditures for 7 nations. The categories are defense, education, and health. The numbers are interesting to look at side by side...

Costa Rica

Defense (0%)
Education (20%)
Health (28%)

France

Defense (6%)
Education (7%)
Health (16%)

Israel

Defense (20%)
Education (15%)
Health (16%)

Russia

Defense (12%)
Education (3%)
Health (1%)

Syria

Defense (24%)
Education (9%)
Health (2%)

United States

Defense (16%)
Education (2%)
Health (22%)

United Kingdom

Defense (7%)
Education (4%)
Health (15%)

Could this be the reason why compared to other globalized nations around the world, the United States is increasingly falling behind in standardized test scores? Are these numbers evidence of why our schools aren't as good as they can be? Now I'm beginning to think...