All the thinking is from the 1970s, and I don't say that pejoratively. It behaves differently. It behaves opposite. I gave a keynote in November, and some very senior people were there, on the future of work and so on, and I was pleading to praise the budget. I was pleading to praise this spring update, to just show some signal.
Sometimes when people have a stroke, they deny that they have a right arm. It's called an agnosia. We have agnosia on the policy of intangibles. So many very smart, thoughtful people come to me and ask what's going wrong. I just say, “They're stuck; they're blind”. No conscientious person—and I do believe there are many conscientious people—would behave like this if they were cognizant of the consequences of inattention.
I was severely disappointed in the spring economic statement. We were involved deeply prior to the budget. This trillion-dollar divergence is going to get worse. The harms are going to get worse until we update our approaches and start attending to the real battle lines of the 21st century.