David Higham

oldtrotter.bsky.social

20 October 2026 07:53

Here’s the result of a famous survey carried out in 1971. Bear in mind that Kaldor and Johnson were from opposite sides of the economics profession . Now economic analysis is much more sophisticated, there is a substantial body of work showing that the benefits exceeded costs.

Jim Waterson

jim.londoncentric.media

20 October 2026 07:51

Kneejerk response to this is nuts. My relative is alive because this summer, out of desperation, we keyed his symptoms (that had baffled NHS consultants) into Claude. It diagnosed a rare but simple inter-disciplinary issue. NHS docs swiftly did lifesaving surgery. AI is good at pattern recognition!

Jonathan Portes

jdportes.bsky.social

20 October 2026 07:32

Agree with this. Treasury's credibility on this was unfortunately trashed by Osborne. No reason government couldn't contract this out to a credible academic consortium, which could both summarise existing evidence/studies and do new modelling..

David Henig

davidheniguk.bsky.social

20 October 2026 07:24

I agree with Thomas. I don't think an "official" study changes the nature of the argument.

John Springford

johnspringford.bsky.social

20 October 2026 07:23

Yes, agreed.