I don't know much about the German economy, but based on the U.S. seeming to be the default assumption on non-local message boards, I'll assume your statement refers to their economy as well.

It is to be expected that the economy will swing up again

Are you so sure? There are two strong arguments against this:

  1. Current state of the overall american economy. Basically, it sucks (as has been noted) - the question is, will it recover? I'd say not anytime soon, for the following reasons:
    1. Extremely high average consumer debt. If the average consumer gets a major tax break, they're not going to start spending, they're going to pay off their debt. Guess who profits off this (hint: lenders)? Do you think they're really going to reinvest in innovative businesses when they know how little consumers will be spending? Do you really think interest rate cuts (encouraging already debt-burdened consumers to buy that new car, etc) will solve the problem?
    2. Globalization. Ah, the subject of many ill-informed protests. It does however have a real effect - mainly the wealth gets spread around. Personally, I think this is great, but it's not going to help out the U.S. anytime soon (only in the very long run). Protectionist policies will hurt even more though, so I don't want to dwell on this too much.
    3. The current U.S. administration is, to put it in a polite manner, a little misguided. Have you looked closely at these tax cuts? I mean beyond the partisan bitch fights? They're not going to give the economy a boost, if they wanted to do that they'd give all small business cuts, and cuts to the low-medium tax brackets. This is an extremely sad state of affairs when these simple things go unnoticed. Unfortunately the current administration will in all likelihood be elected again, because, damn it, Americans like their wars (note: "standing behind your president" in this so-called wartime is not patriotism, it's sickening how the word is being abused.)
  2. The software industry is heading quickly towards being obselete. The open source model is clearly winning. This has major implications for anyone involved in the industry. High paying programming jobs? Ha! Development will be done in an open environment or will be outsourced to more cost efficient employees in countries with lower standards of living. Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted!

I admire your optimism, but don't be too surprised when things aren't the same in a few years :)

In reply to Re: Re^3: How far Open Source has come... by Anonymous Monk
in thread How far Open Source has come... by tjh

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