At Curbside Classic, Stephen Pellegrino posted a series of street pix from his home area in New Jersey. Each pair was Then/Now. Then was 1970s. Now was the closest he could get to the original on Google Streets.
Jersey in the 70s was declining badly. Now only the streets and infrastructure remain, and the streets are somewhat cleaner because nobody is around to get them dirty.
Tom Edison turned Jersey into Tech Central. Here I showed dozens of 1957 ads from hi-tech engineering and manufacturing firms in Newark. As it happens, 1958 was the inflection point for the Jersey electronics industry, when offshoring accelerated and the domestic industries gave up on consumer products entirely.
Right now we’re seeing a fast-forward rerun of Newark in San Francisco. Tech started moving to California in the same 1958 when Intel (branched from defense contractor Fairchild Camera) developed the IC. Defense and other government customers turned toward computing. SF reached its inflection point in 2020. The “virus” holocaust brought WFH as a sort of inverse offshoring, which was good for American workers but bad for the offices of the tech companies.
QT finished the job. The fake Share Value boom that started in 1995 and accelerated in 2008 with QE and reached warp speed in 2020 with hyperQE, suddenly dried up when Powell pulled the plug. Now SF is collapsing at warp speed toward 1970s Jersey.
Polistra's Mill 