Government spending on education isn’t the same as investing in education

Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey makes that point in this post. Obama (and many, many other politicians) talk about how “investing in education” is one of their top priorities, since that will supposedly improve the economy and make us more competitive with the rest of the world.  The trouble is that government spending on education yields very little, if any value for the money. Some of America’s most pitiably ill-educated kids have been schooled in extremely expensive school districts such as Detroit or Washington, DC. Conversely, many of America’s best educated young people have never set foot in a government-run school.