08-31-2016, 11:58 AM
(08-31-2016, 12:05 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(08-30-2016, 11:04 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Computers have been around a long time. At what point did computers move from being primarily owned and used by big government and big business to being made available and being made affordable to everyone else. I say Reagan's election and the further implementation of supply side economics made owning a computer for ones business or personal use possible. You're a 3rd gen tech dude. I'm a dude who has been in business for close to 25 years.
Your timing was about right. The Apple II came out in 1977. The personal computer came before Reagan by a bit, but really took of during his time in office.
But it was the microprocessor chip that made cheap PCs possible that caused the explosion more than economic policy. I graduated from college in 1977 and watched the mini and micro computer age take off from Route 128 near Boston. Nothing was going to stop the technology or speed it up much. The microprocessor was an idea whose time had come.
Well, it was Reagan's time as well. Tax and spend had been overdone. A spectacular series of national failures resulted in Carter's national malaise. The notion that the US could attack a whole bunch of problems all at once and inevitably triumph at all of them had grown exhausting, and the failures just kept on coming during the 1970s. The disillusionment led to a call for smaller government and less taxes. In the field of government it was a time of pulling back and doing less.
And the main problem is that LBJ thought we could have lots and lots of both guns and butter. Inflation began to grow as a result. Carter was very conservative, insisting that the Democrats must stay within budget constraints, according to the PBS doc on Carter. Less spending had been the trend since 1967-68, and especially since the war wound down in 1973. The energy crisis then occurred, pushing inflation upward, and that was the main source of the Carter malaise in the late 70s. Reagan just took supply side to ridiculous extremes, and it only worked for the wealthy. Our growing inequality dates mostly from Reagan's time.