Word: 1980s
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Economists point out that the Digital Revolution has not yet been reflected in productivity statistics. The annual growth of nonfarm productivity during the 1980s and 1990s has averaged about 1%, in contrast to almost 3% in the 1960s. But that may be changing. During the past year, productivity grew about 2.5%. And in the most recent quarter the rate was more than...
...enormous psychological change from the 1950s. In the postwar boom, there was general agreement about shoring up the New Deal institutions that promised to protect people if there were another economic earthquake. That consensus was carried into the expansion of the 1960s but then rolled back in the 1980s. "Most people may want to see welfare reformed," says Mitchell, "but a by-product of that is the widespread notion now that you're on your own. The old social contract that there will be help in bad times is disappearing...
Gillett's riches-to-rags-to-riches story is a perfect proxy for the way capital has snowballed down Wall Street in the past two decades--and by the way, don't expect a moral to this tale. In the 1980s Gillett was busy building a billion-dollar empire based on the odd combination of meatpacking and television stations, much of it financed by the junk bonds of Drexel Burnham Lambert, led by the now infamous Michael Milken. Drexel pumped out high-risk securities the way snowmaking machines create instant winter. Gillett, a Wisconsin boy, loved...
...study of the company's business practices as they relate to federal antitrust law. A Lessig conclusion that Microsoft's plan to knit Explorer into the upcoming Windows 98 system violates antitrust statutes could mean the biggest antitrust battle since the Feds broke up Ma Bell in the 1980s. The stakes? Just the future of Windows; which is to say the PC; which is to say the Net; which is to say human civilization as we know it. Both Lessig's report and Win 98 are due next spring. But for now, lawyers and lobbyists, start your engines...
...will depend in part on whether fossil-fuel prices remain low and the entrenched opposition of many oil and electric-power companies can be overcome. The pace of change will be heavily influenced by the climate agreement that emerges in Kyoto and the national policies that follow. In the 1980s, California provided tax incentives and access to the power grid for new energy sources, which enabled the state to dominate renewable-energy markets worldwide. Similar incentives and access have been offered by European countries in the 1990s. Sometimes such measures are needed to overcome the momentum of a century...