On Sat, 7 Feb 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
> The late-2001 titanium
> Powerbook G4 I'm typing this on seemed pretty snazzy two years ago.
> Now it's seeming a little constrained & poky. So that has to be
> accounted for somehow. But it's far more apparent if I'm editing a
> large Photoshop doc than if I'm just typing an email. What's the
> "real" increase in output between a late-2001 vintage machine and
> today's? The BLS PC price index says it's 56% more. Is it really?
So let me get this straight: we're going to bump up the values of computers this year because last year's model seems "a little poky" compared to this year's? Is there any actual evidence at all that this marginally faster speed reading email and producing photoshop documents actually led to any actual increase in the production of goods and services? To be a little frivolous, couldn't be it like that onion article: "network down, employee productivity rises 200% because nobody's using their computers to browse Ebay?"
I know economists don't worry about whether their utilitarian models actually predict complex human social behavior, but this hedonic pricing stuff is just goofy to me. Am I missing something?
Miles