Software Industry Has $1 Trillion Economic Impact In US (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNET: A report from software trade organization BSA The Software Alliance shows that the software industry is driving economics gains across the country. The software industry had a $1.07 trillion impact on U.S. gross domestic product in 2014, according to the report. It's being driven by 2.5 million jobs directly related to the software industry, with an additional 7.3 million positions for people in real estate, professional services and other fields the industry supports. California surpassed all other states with 408,143 software jobs that contributed roughly $90.53 billion to the GDP. New York came in second with 147,361 software jobs contributing $37.16 billion. Texas came in third with 200,000 jobs adding about $30 billion. Alaska came in last place with 1,325 software jobs contributing $248 million to the GDP.
BSA is just a front for Microsoft, so what are they lobbying for? I'm guessing its a subsidy and some protection when their desktop market collapses under the oncoming storm of ARM desktops.
Are they setting the stage to go before Congress and ask permission to impose the death penalty on license scofflaws?
#DeleteChrome
For comparison, the total GDP of the country is a little under $17 trillion.
Labor force participation is low, the levels it was in the 1970s. There's a recent uptick in jobs, but the graph is notoriously noisy, and it'll be at least 6 months to a year before we can tell whether this is a trend.
GDP per capita (amount of GDP per person) has about doubled since 1995. Quadrupled since 1970.
Despite these gains, household income has dropped by about 8% in the last 10 years.
So in summary, since 1995 (ish) we doubled our GDP (both per person and in absolute terms), and household income right now is about the level it was at the start of the doubling.
Oh, and everyone who works still has to put in 40hrs/week.
If you take into account the money the H-1B "employees" send back home? In other words, are they counting the wages paid, as reported by the industry, or the actual wages spent within the U.S.? They also need to account for the lesser pay earned the H-1B's. Those figures should be higher if everyone was payed the fair market wage.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
With so much time and money spent on software, and all the speculation on AI taking over the world, you would think I could integrate my ERP with my CRM without having to pay for another module only to find I need to pay for yet another module to make it work.
Is it a +ve or -ve impact?
Dialectician. Archology.
Every time there is a patent case, the GDP goes up.
But like lawyers, how much value does software actually add?
There is certainly thousands of times more of it than 20 years ago. An operating system that could fit in a few meg now needs a few gig to do much the same things. How does that affect the value per line of code?
I suspect that the $1 trillion number the BSA came up with is a generous estimation that gives excessive weight to all the secondary sectors that the software industry supports. Just because construction firms purchase a bunch of trucks doesn't mean that construction jobs get counted as part of "the auto industry's impact on GDP." The only thing that counts towards GDP is the revenue generated by the sales of those trucks (worker wages DO NOT count as part of GDP unless they are government workers), same principle should apply to the software industry.
Just a bunch of rhetoric to talk up Congress about why its so important that they pass a bunch of new IP laws to protect the US economy.
Are you trying to write in French?
We don't have adjectival agreement in English.
At the bottom of the
The same as legal prostitution/pornography (I believe). Just think how many jobs would be created if it was legal in all US states. Those libertarians who think we should all be independent contractors must admit that the sexual services industry is a perfect match to the 'gig economy'. They can encourage industry growth by promoting mother and daughters to operate a family business. Plus, another bonus, it really boosts the number of women in business: Yay!
when we can make.....billions?
I was writing software back before it was cool
The software industry has had, probably, on-balance a negative impact on the people of the US in the last 10 years, (though, in the previous 20, it was likely a little beneficial). Anybody that believes that some senseless, contrived number like Gross Domestic Product (what a POS!) * is somehow a measure of some kind of "good" -- these people are off-my-chart of sentient beings. The only reasonable explanation for their statements ("news is propaganda, education is indoctrination") is that these ghouls don't believe what they write, and are merely employed by our oppressors to make us endure a worse future, and believe that things are all right. "The five-year plan was over-achieved, comrade!!!".
--
*Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
- Robert Kennedy, 1968
We knew that computers were hurting worker productivity, but who thought the damage would be as high as one Terabuck?
For reference
according to the reference below the United States spends about 1 trillion dollars a year on anti-poverty programs.
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=4923
That is a very impacting word impact. So much impact.
Impact this.
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
So it is not only the figure of how much debt, but the amount of "interest" paid to "service" that debt. That is all financial headlock. To speak of the impact of $1 trillion by the software sector is misleading. While you have international bankers and lenders charging interest, America is being flooded with foreigners that use very expensive social services. Obama is calling them refugees, they are primarily Mexicans from south and Muslims from abroad.