Here in New York, we love to feel good about ourselves for our compassion for the less well off. Yes, we pay higher taxes than they do in other places, but for that we get a much higher level of social services to lift up the poor and the downtrodden. Or at least, that’s the narrative.

I first covered this subject back in the very early days of this blog, on November 13, 2012, in a post titled “Why New York City Is A High Tax Jurisdiction.” That post pointed out that in fact the differential in public spending (and therefore taxes) between New York City and other jurisdictions could be found almost entirely in three things, none of which provided any measurable improvements in life quality to the poor and the downtrodden. The three areas were (1) overspending on public pensions, brought about by early retirement ages that enable New York City workers to have 25 to 40 years of post-retirement leisure at taxpayer expense, (2) overspending on K-12 education, brought about by paying about double the number of workers as other jurisdictions use to do the same work, and (3) overspending on Medicaid, brought about by adding every possible bell and whistle to the program without improving health outcomes in any measurable way.

For example, I had this to say about New York City spending on K-12 education:

According to census bureau figures cited here, New York City school spending was about $19,000 per student in 2009. That's about double the nationwide average of $10,615 per student cited here for 2010. What do we get for double the cost per student? Worse test scores than the national average. . . . With over a million school children, the extra $8000 per student is an $8 billion budget item.

Somehow, in seven plus intervening years, almost no one seems to be paying attention to how New York just throws money away to achieve worse results than those achieved elsewhere for half the money. But over the weekend, the New York Post made an exception, publishing an op-ed by a guy named Ryan Fazio titled “NY and CA spend billions more in taxes than TX and FL — and get worse results.” Fazio updates many of the statistics that I had collected for the 2012 post.

Let’s focus on spending for K-12 education and for anti-poverty programs. Fazio provides the following chart of K-12 education spending and results for four states: New York, California, Texas and Florida: