like_any_other

The reliability of incarceration data can also vary, but you didn't dismiss that. In fact, all data is unreliable, so should we just give up on comparisons entirely? Unless you have a specific reason to think US/SK numbers are wrong (and by how much - we're not giving up on comparisons over 1-10% errors, when the difference is 10x), what you've done is provided a fully generic counterargument: "well data isn't perfect, therefore I am right and you are wrong."

> Homicides are also a fraction of violent crime, let alone all crime.

Typical feigned intellectual helplessness. Knowing nothing else, if the homicide rate is 2x higher, the most reasonable extrapolation is that violent crime in general is also 2x higher. And we use homicide because it's harder to fudge - if I used crime in general, your complaint would have been over-policing or different definitions instead.

> Also, SK suicide rate

As is typical for the NYT, their articles include carefully constructed misinformation. The methodology for that analysis [1] has two serious issues.

First, they don't include federal funding, which in 2023 was $120 billion [3], eclipsing the funding disparity. The Title I federal funding budget for 2026, which is specifically for low-income schools, is set to be $63 billion [3], all excluded from this analysis.

Second, "All of the revenue figures presented are cost-adjusted to convert per-pupil revenues into figures that account for variation in the purchasing power of a dollar across different regions." So because more whites live in the middle of nowhere where rent is cheap because nobody wants to go there and there are no economic opportunities, academics launder that into "higher PPP-adjusted school funding".

Correct for those, and you find that "on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively. This is anticipated due to the strong relationship between race and poverty and the increased federal funding targeted toward students in districts with concentrated poverty." [4]

Finally, it should be noted that the US spends a lot per pupil - in PPP, according to the OECD, the US was #4 in the world in 2023 (year the data is from, not when the article as published) [5]. No matter how you slice it, you can't blame funding for poor school quality. Where "school quality" is usually a sneaky term to say student outcomes, as if swapping the students between two schools (all the students), you'd expect the students swapped to the "good" school to suddenly start performing, and the students in the "bad" school to have their grades tank and develop discipline problems.

Not that I ever expected the NYT to include such context with their misinformation.