On September 28, 2012, the postgraduate students of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto organized a conference on the theme of "Health, Austerity and Affluence." It brought together academics, health-care professionals and public policy makers in a forum to discuss effective health care delivery at a time when the gap between wealth and poverty appears to be increasing while, at the same time, governments are imposing austerity measures on public spending--not least in the field of public health. The remarks by Dr. Blake Poland are of direct importance not only to college students and teachers in Nursing and related health-care programs, but also to any educators who understand that education is an inherently moral and political practice: moral because it is deeply infused with values, and political because those values are essentially contested. Most obviously in vocational pursuits involving the creation and distribution of public services and private commercial enterprise, but even in the most instrumental and technical fields, education involves a continuing dialogue about what knowledge is "for" and how the use of knowledge adds to or detracts from the common good.