There are two ways in which any government can proceed. One is a way, based on what you and I would call a free society, which is enshrined right at the heart of the American Constitution. The other one is a way which allows only one view, both of economics and politics, in which almost everything is either owned or controlled by the state, including the media, including the ideas, including freedom of discussion and everything. There is no freedom of discussion. Now, between those two ways, the free society and the totally controlled society, there are, of course, variations. I think what we've learned in Britain is that we've gradually, over the last, certainly, 12 or 13 years, we've perhaps a little interruption, gone slowly further and further away from the free society towards something else. At the same time, we've found, I don't find it strange, but some other people do, that we have stopped creating wealth. We've had a large number of increasing restrictions, and you've been finding two things. First, that we are more and more concentrating on redistributing the wealth we've got, rather than creating any more. To create more, you need a slightly freer society, and you need an incentive society. Naturally, when I see that happening, I look with very, very great alarm to societies which have gone even further left. That is, they've tried to redistribute even more, and haven't had the incentives for people working hard on their own account, doing well for their families, and often then being able to create jobs for others, they've produced a much more prosperous society than we have. But by and large, you've got the two broad, different economic and political approaches. I think in many ways, American politics have been, well, they are very different, because you've two parties based on a free society, or free enterprise society, an economic freedom. We've one party based on that, one main party, and another one, based on socialism. But you see, for years now, in British politics, this word, you must use it consensus, as red its head, you must have a consensus. It's a word again, you used not to use when I first came in politics. We had convictions, and we tried to persuade people that our convictions were the right ones, and it's no as good having convictions, unless you have the will to translate those convictions into action. But politics was more, if you had convictions, than a matter of multiple maneuverings to get through the problems of the day. I often think when you're going for consensus, so often it means that those who believe, as I believe, tend to give in to the left wing, and you steadily move further. What is it that ultimately transforms experience into guidance? I give you a recent example of... It's conviction and determination. Well, it's also...it's truly a hierarchy of values, isn't it? Because if by experience you find that you lose a certain amount of liberty, and you return for a precarious security, and you don't mind, then you don't... You call it a hierarchy of values, I say, what matters to you? If I lose liberty, then it takes away the basic reason for living. So what is it that you're the sort of person who doesn't mind about having an liberty, provided you've got a house and food coming to you, and you will do what you're told to do? Then perhaps you won't mind. I suppose it's the difference between being born free and living life, like an animal at the zoo in a cage. Alright, some animals do live lives in cages, but for me, freedom is part of life. It's both. Well, I only use that as an example to show that the difference between... You can have total security without any freedom. Sure, sure. To some people, that would be attractive, not to me at all. I was about to give you an example of something recently written by an emergent professor of economics called George Stigler, the University of Chicago, and he said, you know, there are a few things that economists know with the force of certitude. There are a huge number of things about which we are very vain, that we don't know at all. But certain things we do know, and one of the four instances that minimum weight is will not raise the level of income. Now, he said, any further demonstration of this is entirely a super-arrogatory. It's just known. Well, neither the Republican Party or the Democratic Party would ever dare to come out in opposition to the minimum weight because a superstition is endemic that the minimum weight actually elevates the income of poor people. In fact, poor people are precisely who are hurt by a minimum income. Make the point about minimum income. I think in societies where there are enormous differences between very great wealth and very great poverty, I would recall from that. You recall from what? From enormous differences between very great wealth in the presence of very great poverty. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yes, but it has. One word. You wait. I'm coming to that. So there is therefore something to be said for a certain amount of redistribution there from, by taxation, and you've done it as well as we have. This is what taxation is about. So you do do a certain amount of redistribution from those. Yes, I know you're getting very irritated, but it's one moment from those to try to help people who are poverty-stricken to get up off the floor and raise their standard. But that I do. And we would call that a basic safety net. And we would accept a moral commitment in a kind of society like yours or ours. But jointly, we do try to guarantee some basic standard of life. And indeed, rather more than a basic standard of life, but there are certain benefits you can get from social security. And we both agree on that now. What has happened to us is that the redistribution process has gone on so much further that these standards here, say in earnings, are our lowest in cavernas, earn about half average earnings, and our top in net-take-home pay, our top in cavernas, only earn about four times. So that's a comparatively narrow gap, as a matter of fact, happens to be narrow, isn't it, Soviet Russia? Now, once you compress the incentives from the top down and say, it doesn't matter how much you earn, I'm going to take the lion share away from you. Then they say, all right, I'm no longer going to do the lion's part. And then they stop creating the extra wells, which would both benefit them and benefit society as a whole. Once they stop doing that, they don't benefit, then there aren't any extra taxes to improve the schools or the social services. Now, do you see there is some point in some societies in a degree of redistribution? But once it becomes a depression on incentive to get on by your own effort, then you're denying all people the means of increasing the wealth of our people individually and as a whole. Sure. And you just become, as we have become, a stagnant society.