How Does a Poor Economy Affect Tech Innovation?

sshuber writes "It's no secret that the US and other parts of the world are currently having some economic problems. How is this affecting new technologies under development? With the large numbers of layoffs, are we seeing projects, such as things under R&D, that are being axed? Are companies playing it safe and sticking with what they know sells in lieu of pushing the envelope? Finally, how is this affecting the open source community, either positively or negatively?" A lot of open source work happens with the backing or at least the sufferance of corporations. Do laid-off tech workers contribute fewer cycles to open source projects, or more?

Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy?

[EastCoastSurfer]

If by rural America you mean farmers, they are doing fantastic right now. They can either get paid to not grow stuff, grow wheat and sell it for food at record high prices, or grow corn and sell it at record high prices and get the ethanol subsidy from the gov.

I agree that the economy is pretty poor right now, but it's not the farmers who are currently suffering :)

Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake up. [washingtonpost.com]

Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy?

[willyhill]

I disagree. With the exception of Europe, the number of people in those countries you claim are "doing great" that are living at or below (WAY below) the poverty level is still staggering. And I omit Europe because growth in the EU is very different from growth in India and China.

History shows that only a small number of people ever truly benefit from runaway growth and industrialization. Are there more Chinese driving Mercedes Benz? Sure. For all the miracle that is high-tech India, you still see things like these [himalmag.com]. But all that doesn't mean those societies as a whole are doing great from an financial and quality of life standpoints.

If you think the economic divide is bad in the west, you should try one of those countries.

Holy fucking Cthulu, Batman!

[Russ Nelson]

Large numbers of layoffs

What the fuck are you talking about? April 2007 unemployment: 4.73M, March 2008 unemployment: 4.49M, April 2008 unemployment: 4.68M

What large numbers of layoffs?

Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy?

[homer_s]

However, disparity of wealth distribution isn't even the point in contention (no one disputes that it is a real problem).

Why would that be a problem? I'm from India. There is greater gap between the rich and poor now than there was in the 1980s. But, everyone is richer than we were in the 1980s.

In the 80s in India, the situation was comparable to a rich guy having $10 and a poor guy having $9 and now, it is as if the rich guy has $1000 and the poor guy has $90. Clearly, in the second scenario, the "gap between rich and poor" is higher, but is it the worse scenario among the two I've presented?

Re:necessity the mother of invention

[nicklott]

Europe's historically high fuel taxes have already pushed them to adopt fuel efficient cars and public transit...They're not going to feel the pinch like we will

Wanna bet? Diesel is > $10 a gallon in most of the UK right now and 25 years of right wing governments have pared public transport outside london down to an unusable skeleton. I can assure you that people are feeling the pinch: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7420792.stm [bbc.co.uk].

High taxes to try to discourage consumption are all well and good when the underlying price is low but now it's gone through the roof there's a very real danger that the economy is going to be seriously harmed. Many companies, particularly in transportation, are losing money. Unless the oil price drops dramatically in the next few weeks or fuel tax is slashed (yeah, right) an already unpopular government is going to become substantially less popular.

BTW I think Brazil is somewhat ahead of the US in the new fuel race...