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I’m not defending Krugman, but in my own defense, no one would have predicted flat screens computers and 4lbs laptops would be available to the general public m
by guestbest 4y ago
I’m not defending Krugman, but in my own defense, no one would have predicted flat screens computers and 4lbs laptops would be available to the general public much less for so cheap. If prices remained steady from 1998, were talking about a computer that costs roughly 2k and there is no online banking. Municipal taxes and courts are also mostly not online as well, but they tend to have fax numbers. Day to day budgeting and bill paying was not online except for larger businesses who also set up meetings and emailed spreadsheets to handle expenses
- cplusplusfellow 4y agoI’m not trying to be dense here, but exactly all of that was predicted. What about the environment in 1998 caused you to believe that we would stagnate? Just 3 years later, online banking was ubiquitous in 2001 - such that I stood at a conference for retail banking and personally pitched dozens of banking executives on frameworks and white label software they could use to build their own. Meaning that it wasn’t just one-off banks who were doing it, and surely some were doing this in 1998 as well. Cable modems were becoming common. ADSL was next best thing. 1998 was a year things really exploded. It was part of the tech bubble upswing. I’m confused what would cause someone to think that was the end of history.
- guestbest 4y agoI never said it was the end of history. I was just remarking on non portable, multi thousand dollar devices needed from the consumer side. But you are right, it was a bubble.
- cplusplusfellow 4y agoBut was it really? The GDP of the internet and related industries was many times the size in 2005 as it was in 1998.
- guestbest 4y agoBut why were the industries so much larger?