Paul Krugman, the outstanding economist and columnist for The New York Times, gets it wrong - - embarrassingly wrong - - in giving consideration to a theory that the great changes happened between 1870 and 1940 and we are not witnessing them today.
Krugman reviews Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth and doesn't disagree in the least with Gordon's old-white-guy contention that things are not changing dramatically today.
So, while I usually work from home - - a business change Gordon and Krugman deny - - but this week I am working from a small fishing village in a rural part of Puerto Rico. The Internet connections are fine. And I'm teaching online classes. And I'm laughing at Krugman and Gordon for suggesting my work is barely different from my father's newspaper job in 1940.
Krugman gives an outside possibility that he too is an old-white-guy with no sense of what is happening to Gen Y and future generations- - and then dismisses this outside chance.
Gordon is right about the great transformation in technology, business and way of living that occurred 100 years ago. We put the Big Change, as does the great historian who wrote the book on it, from 1900 to 1920.
And then Gordon inexplicably implies that here in 2016 we can foresee the results of this amazing change for 2040. It is 1916 and no, no one fully understand what life would be like in 1940.
But it is already clear to everyone under age 40 that the world has changed mightily in the last 16 years. And that those changes are as big and transformational as those changes 100 years ago.
Comments