Florida Knows All About the 1%

[Atman]

3. One of my FB friends from school daze, now a rapid Republican...

...was rather upset at this story (I found it on FB, posted by another old school friend who is a fellow Democrat). He said the whole story was stupid, with made-up numbers posted by a "delusional layman" with no qualifications to write such a commentary.

Since GOP friend also didn't bother to back up his assertion that the numbers were bogus, I asked him to explain. So I have to give him credit for this valid response, although he only addressed one point laid out in the article: it doesn't make much sense to measure Florida's education spending on a per capita basis; wouldn't the proper figure to quote be the amount spent per student as a function of the cost of living?

Well, I'm not sure that "as a function of the cost of living" makes total sense, either, but here is where I think he stumbled onto a valid point; statistically, spending per student per capita doesn't make sense in ANY state, but especially not in a state as big as Florida with such a large percentage of its population being childless retirees.

I didn't go through the article again looking for similar statistical tomfoolery, but my ol' GOP friend was correct at least on this one point. Of course, even a broken clock is right twice a day.