Computerized Technology and Robotics Have Ushered In A New Era

The Intellectualist' magazine published the following table showing a shap change in economic performance in 1980---and someone asked me to account for the change.

January 2 at 11:27am · 

The Intellectualist

December 27, 2016 at 2:52pm · 

"The Great Regression" - Do you notice where the change occurred? (Credit: The New York Times)

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And so I responded!

Apple computers were invented in 1976, and in 1977, my employer purchased 12 and provided me with one of the 12. My secretary had a very user-unfriendly IBM wordprocesser at the time where a lengthy address had to be inputted to find and access files

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Apple used a menu of icons to easily find and access files, a system Microsoft copied in producing its windows operating system, which then became the norm for office computing and sparked similar ease-of-operation systems in the development of computerized mechanization of manufacturing technology.

 
All this happened starting in about 1980 to exponentially increase productivity, lower prices, and foster high employment and wage gains during the transition.

 
The reverse is true now with growing unemployment as robotics and other computerized technology steals most jobs which will usher in a new era when few work and sparking new rules about how we keep consumption necessary to keep the economy afloat for the new world.