Paul Krugman has the opinion piece in The New York Times, The Big Meh.
In other words, at this point, the whole digital era, spanning more than four decades, is looking like a disappointment. New technologies have yielded great headlines, but modest economic results. Why?
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One possibility is that the numbers are missing the reality,
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Another possibility is that new technologies are more fun than fundamental.
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So what do I think is going on with technology? The answer is that I don’t know — but neither does anyone else.
The feigned ignorance that Krugman displays in articles like this is getting way more than a bit tiresome. He seems capable of thinking up two possibilities, and then seems to give up. He fails to note that over the more than four decades he cites, there has been a decimation of the government’s incentives for industry and the oligarchs to share the benefits of increased productivity with the workers. In past periods of increased productivity and economic growth, the sharing of the benefits with the workers has spurred enough job creation to make up for the jobs wiped out by increased productivity.
For a self-declared liberal with a conscience, Krugman’s inability to imagine this as a third possible explanation makes one wonder what has happened to that conscience. As John Oliver of the Last Week Tonight show might wonder in reference to Paul Krugman’s articles in the lame stream media, How Is This Still a Thing?
I also have to wonder what the GDP numbers would look like if we still paid workers a fair salary? So raise the minimum wage already. And how about re-empowering those unions? It seems like Paul Krugman’s well of ideas has dried up. Maybe it’s time for him to retire. That might give him more time to think, and be more productive.