Not true:

> The best way to answer that might be to imagine what someone from the golden age would notice if we brought him here in a time machine. [...] The first thing he'd notice, if he walked through a fancy shopping district, is that all the prominent watchmakers of the golden age seem to be doing better than ever.

It was several paragraphs before that, where pg said "[...] what someone from the golden age would notice if we brought him here in a time machine."