From the conclusion "None of the arguments in this article suggest that governments should invest less in basic schooling, for many reasons" The main part of t

From the conclusion "None of the arguments in this article suggest that governments should invest less in basic schooling, for many reasons" The main part of the article deals with the fact that microeconomic data strongly supports returns to educational yet cross sectional comparisoms of countries don't. The author prefers structural differences to labour forces meaning some countries make better use of their educated workforce to signalling arguments. It's going to take stronger evidence from a paper making stronger claims than that to convince people that the US would be the same place if educational investment was at the pre public education level when most kids didn't learn to read or perform basic arithmetic.