What was the 'New Economy'?
Beginning in the late 1980s and until the Dot Com bust of the first years of this century, influential politicians, journalists, and public intellectuals heralded the birth of a “New Economy,” which they believed would give rise to a new era of affluence and growth. After nearly two decades of sluggish productivity improvement, the US economy experienced a spike of growth beginning in the mid-1990s, likely in large part because of businesses adopting personal computers and the Internet.
These developments led to hopes for significant future change that would enable escape from the economic doldrums of the 1970s and 1980s. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates promised “business at the speed of thought.” Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers told Congress, “We are growing faster than ever before.” And at a gathering titled the White House Conference on the New Economy, President William Jefferson Clinton told attendees, “I believe the computer and Internet give us a chance to move more people out of poverty more quickly than at any time in all of human history.” This paper will examine claims made about the New Economy, with particular attention to what observers pointed to as evidence of change, what they believed was changing, and what they thought these changes entailed for policymaking, businesses, and individual workers.
