Krugmann seems off-base in this 1996 article. In the 4 years since it was
published the "information economy" has taken off, rather then taken a
beating. He did seem prescient regarding the failure of dot.coms and the
alledged shortage of information workers (according to MicroSoft and Oracle)
in order to get more foreign workers in at "low-ball" salaries. Yet, if his
people to people economy is so hot, why aren't people leaving high school and
leaping into these positions? I disagree with Krugmann's notion that the
economic down-sizing of the early 1990's was the first one that affected the
white collar worker, as I recall that every recession since 1957 has done
this, not merely factory workers. Finally Krugmann chose to ignore the impact
of technology, all technology, not just computers.
In a message dated 7/11/00 2:21:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time, max@maxmore.com
writes:
<< Thanks for that link, Robin. A quick skim brings up some points that look
sound and some that look dubious. I'll have to read it thoroughly later.
Since I mentioned a while back that it seemed to me that Krugman, good as
he is on many issues, does not "get" the New Economy, and I did not find
time to dig up the sources of my disagreement, I will take this opportunity
to point to one link that I just came across in a pile of stuff to read:
http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue67/news-economics.html
Onward!
Max
Max More, Ph.D.
President, Extropy Institute. www.extropy.org >>
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