Rudyard Griffiths

Yeah, we survived that crisis.

Way more debt, way more leverage.

So trying to end maybe on an optimistic note, but to start from a not optimistic place, which was after the Second World War, we were kind of serious for a number of decades.

Like there was a sobriety to our politics, to our policy, to how people decided to act in the public square, how public officials decided to conduct the affairs of state.

like what can we come back to like through these crises does there come a moment janice where probity and sobriety and the cautionary principle finally reasserts itself and there's some kind of reset that allows us breathing room to catch up to

to move through this moment.

Because what I'm concerned about, Janice, is I just don't know if we can, let alone the third crisis that now seems upon us, but to contemplate a fourth and a fifth with more public borrowing on top of that, with more interconnectivity with AI, with climate, with the poly crisis intensifying.

Surely this is the moment where we have to rediscover some of that sobriety and probity of the past.

The effective tax rate in the United States in the 1950s on high earners, I think it got upwards of 90%.

We actually paid our way.

Yeah, that's right.

It's like if you want defense, guess what, ladies and gentlemen, you're going to have to pay for this.

Correct.

Nobody raises taxes now.

Nobody raises taxes.

Again, this seems like the immature conversation that we have with ourselves at these moments of crisis.

We don't actually, again, have the probity, the sobriety, the seriousness of generations past.

Let me just prolong this a minute.

You probably want to move on.

No, no, no.