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Can you drive growth by causing mass unemployment?
These people are FUCKING stupid 😡

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/12/why-starmer-and-reeves-are-pinning-hopes-on-ai-to-drive-growth-in-uk

#UKPolitics #AI
#ai #ukpolitics
Dial M for Madeye 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇮🇪
These people are on another planet.
MiniMia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇵🇸
More like another plain of existence.
Steve Woods
The other leg of the space-time trousers?
MiniMia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇵🇸
If you're going to bring Douglas Adams into it, I'm going home.

(I have no idea if "space time trousers" are anything to do with Douglas Adams)
Steve Woods
It's Terry Pratchett not a sometime Dr Who scriptwriter.
Fellow of the Brutish Academy
Well, look, Keynes is so 1930s. I'm advised that they do discuss macroeconomics at Oxford, but you wouldn't believe it. It looks like you can achieve a first in PPE without understanding macroeconomics (vide Cameron).
MiniMia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇵🇸
You can achieve a first in PPE at Oxford if you buy them a new library or whatever.
Fellow of the Brutish Academy
Donate £150m like Schwarzman of Blackstone and you can have your eponymous Humanities Research Institute (check that irony against Blackstone).
BashStKid
Are you perchance thinking of the Rupert Murdoch library at Worcester College?

More seriously, PPE would be less maligned if they insisted on the philosophy and ethics middle P and not just the ‘How to be a complete knob with a pretend smattering of economics’ bits.
MiniMia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇵🇸
Not specifically. Another win for generalised cynicism 😐
BashStKid
Or, put another way, I can imagine all sorts of reasons you might want to study politics, or economics, or philosophy. But for a kid to actually say ‘I want to do PPE at Oxford’, that’s a bit of a wanker warning.
MiniMia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇵🇸
At this point in human history I'd be concerned about anyone wanted to study philosophy or politics as well.
Fellow of the Brutish Academy
There are one or two very interesting people there in political theory:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n24/sophie-smith/sleeping-women

https://sophiesmithoxford.com/

Historians used to have a paper on Pol Theory.

Sophie Smith · Sleeping Women: On the Pelicot trial

Gisèle Pelicot doesn’t conceive of her now ex-husband or the other men who raped her as ‘bad apples’, aberrations...
Sophie Smith (London Review of Books)
Steve Woods
Following Keynesian principles would have saved decades of pain, but he's clearly out of fashion since I was taught economics by a left-wing economist 5 decades ago.

How Cameron got into Oxford without the requisite 2 brain cells is beyond me.
MiniMia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇵🇸
I'll preface this by saying I know fuck all about economics, macro or otherwise, but my layman's understanding is that Keynes and free market capitalism are, shall we say, incompatible.
How David Cameron got into Oxford is by having a vaguely aristo Mummy and a very rich Daddy.
Nini
Depends where the growth happens and who the benefactors of said growth will be. Mass unemployment is a problem for someone else to solve, charities maybe? Self-employment even!
MiniMia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇵🇸
They may as well admit they're trying to kill off the poors at this point.
"Everyone shuffle another rung further down the social mobility ladder to make room for AI".
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