[gabrielroth]

> Here's a fucking idea to help booster the economy - how about MAKING people upgrade from IE6. BOOM! Hundreds of thousands of web developer (wo)man-hours saved, increasing efficiency across the whole web-based IT sector.

Under normal circumstances that might be a good idea. But given the output gap in the economy, the last thing we need would be less work for web developers. If the government wants to stimulate the web-design sector, it should introduce a hundred new rendering engines, each with a slightly different interpretation of the CSS specs, and then give out grants to businesses to make their sites compatible.

[lisp_padawan]

ah yes, I see what you mean, didn't fully think it through did I? - I was kind of hoping that all those suddenly free programmer hours would be funnelled into creative programming and start-up ventures, boosting the economy sans government spending...

[Xichekolas]

Another interesting example of the those who view job retention as the means to economic stimulus versus those who view job creation as the prefered means to that end.

I tend to agree with you. Funding make-work projects benefit the workers involved (and tangentially the businesses they buy from), but innovating and spawning whole new companies/industries seems like a better use of our time and effort.