As Sandel points out, there are three classic ways to categorize justice: welfare, freedom and virtue. Although I doubt that we need to have a long conversation

As Sandel points out, there are three classic ways to categorize justice: welfare, freedom and virtue. Although I doubt that we need to have a long conversation here, I think that what is great in America has not been that it maximizes freedom over all else, but rather that it has continued to find an appropriate balance between these conceptions of just government action. To dismiss the idea that promoting welfare--through education--is a worthy ideal of our government, and rather to say that freedom is the paramount ideal is short-sided, and naive. Krugman's point may not be convincing, but neither is yours that unfettered liberty is the reason that America has prospered. Krugman's inaccuracy, in my opinion, is not that America's education was a driving force in economic growth, particularly in post-war America, but rather that the federal government was a driving force in the growth of education. The sad thing is that the arguments we have today are not all that dissimilar from the ones that were had on the local levels during the common school movement in the 19th century. Some felt that certain segments of the population were not worth being educated, which is essentially what a lot of people today are supporting with a radically inequitable system, especially for those from poorer (both monetarily and 'culturally'). OCW is a laudable example of open education, but that does little to address one of the key points that Krugman is making. Namely, that on indicators of educational success far lower than college education, we are failing so many of our students. The fact that I can read graduate level micro notes from MIT doesn't help someone who can't properly add because they were provided with poor primary education in the Bronx. I'm a firm believer in the idea that we rise and fall by our citizens, and it is sad that so many of our citizens are provided with substandard education. To that end, whether you think that federal government does or does not have a role in the educational system, I think we can all agree that something needs to be done, or we will continue to fall behind the rest of the industrial world.