But repairing roads and rail, building modern airports, keeping our broadband and energy grid at world class standards, making sure the sewers don't leak, strengthening the sinews for the extreme weather that is upon us -- this isn't an ideological question.
On TV you see the things of world-class standard.
The Russell Group can take much credit for the world-class standard of British higher education today.
Under chief conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the best of its performances here reached a world-class standard of organic coherence and tonal excellence.
"We learned to evaluate rice quality by a world-class standard," said Tim Johnson, president of the California Rice Commission, which represents growers and marketers.
"In the entire supply chain there's no common standard or world-class standard," said Zhang Bing, who helped prepare the study.
No band has emerged in the wake of Dinosaur to establish themselves as a world-class standard bearer for Sonic Youth's spirit, and their music and ideas remain too leftfield to break out, REM-style, into the US mainstream.
"The organisation is trying to do too much and its resources are spread too thinly, and inevitably I'd much rather we did fewer things and we did them to a genuinely world-class standard and made a really important contribution in those fewer areas".
We have to achieve parity of services so that every child with a life-limiting condition and every family of such a child is guaranteed a world-class standard of care, and the support they deserve in the most difficult of times.
For all this, Rooney has fallen short of the world-class standard illustrated in this World Cup by Uruguay striker Luis Suarez, bite controversy aside, and Argentina star Lionel Messi.
"With the new Emirates stadium in place, the transformation of Bridgeton Cross, the creation of the athletes village and the Tollcross swimming pool being upgraded to a world-class standard, the investment to date has seen a dramatic change in the local landscape," she said.
