Wealth & Money Quote by Donald L. Carcieri

“Good schools” is doing quiet political heavy lifting here: it’s the kind of phrase that sounds like consensus while smuggling in a value system. Carcieri frames education as infrastructure, not a private good, and he widens the case beyond test scores or workforce training. The verb “underpin” is architectural; it implies that schools sit below the visible surface of daily life, load-bearing and too easy to neglect until the whole structure buckles. That’s a deliberate push against the temptation to treat education as just another line item.

The pairing of “economy” with “the social fabric of our lives” is the real rhetorical move. Economy speaks the language of budgets, competitiveness, and return on investment. “Social fabric” shifts the argument to cohesion: whether communities can sustain trust, shared norms, and basic civic competence. It’s a politician’s two-front strategy, aimed at both business-minded voters and those worried about civic fragmentation. Subtext: if schools weaken, the consequences won’t stay neatly inside classrooms; they’ll show up as crime, polarization, inequality, and a workforce that can’t adapt.

Context matters because this kind of line typically surfaces when a leader is justifying increased funding, standards, or reforms that may be unpopular in the short term. It invites voters to see education spending less as generosity and more as maintenance: pay now, or pay later in social and economic repairs. The message is stabilizing, almost parental, and it assumes a public still persuadable that shared institutions are worth collective investment.