"I don't know that I can give a definitive answer to that, I can only say that if we create the right climate those who are producing those products will have the opportunity to move into a higher value product if changes are needed if we get this right"
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It’s the kind of sentence designed to sound like an answer while carefully refusing the obligations of one. Anderson opens with a disarming concession - “I don’t know that I can give a definitive answer” - then immediately swaps clarity for climate: the soothing, managerial metaphor that implies complex economic trade-offs can be handled by adjusting the room temperature. The move is strategic. By foregrounding uncertainty, he inoculates himself against being pinned down; by invoking “the right climate,” he frames outcomes as the natural result of good conditions rather than contested decisions with winners, losers, and timelines.
The intent reads less like literary reflection and more like a policy-adjacent performance of prudence. “Those who are producing those products” keeps people at arm’s length: no workers, no firms, no regions, no specifics. That vagueness isn’t accidental; it avoids naming the industries that might shrink, the jobs that might disappear, or the public cost of helping anyone “move into a higher value product.” “Higher value” itself is a tell: it smuggles in a moral hierarchy of production, suggesting an upgrade path that’s both desirable and broadly available, as if economies routinely ladder up without friction.
The subtext is conditional confidence: change may be necessary, but responsibility is displaced onto an abstract “we” and an even more abstract “if we get this right.” Contextually, it fits the language of late-20th/early-21st century economic governance, where leaders promise adaptability and innovation while sidestepping the messy specifics of industrial decline, retraining, and disruption. The sentence works because it offers reassurance without committing to anything measurable.
The intent reads less like literary reflection and more like a policy-adjacent performance of prudence. “Those who are producing those products” keeps people at arm’s length: no workers, no firms, no regions, no specifics. That vagueness isn’t accidental; it avoids naming the industries that might shrink, the jobs that might disappear, or the public cost of helping anyone “move into a higher value product.” “Higher value” itself is a tell: it smuggles in a moral hierarchy of production, suggesting an upgrade path that’s both desirable and broadly available, as if economies routinely ladder up without friction.
The subtext is conditional confidence: change may be necessary, but responsibility is displaced onto an abstract “we” and an even more abstract “if we get this right.” Contextually, it fits the language of late-20th/early-21st century economic governance, where leaders promise adaptability and innovation while sidestepping the messy specifics of industrial decline, retraining, and disruption. The sentence works because it offers reassurance without committing to anything measurable.
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| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
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