You can chalk this up to two things:

1) a slow economy
2) high U.S. taxes

The only thing I want to force on my fellow Americans is lower taxes.

Taxes may be high, but they're tired of being the universal scapegoat too.

Want to save money? plz... how bout the CEO or executive staff taking a pay cut for a week? hmmm never crossed THEIR minds did it.

How about they get working on a proper Flash for x64 browsers.

it will never happen

I hear that... God forbid their CEO or Execs take a pay cut!

I hear that.... God forbid their CEO or Execs take a pay cut!

...time to loot when everyone is gone!

AdamB5000
While the US has technically has just about the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world, sometimes topping 40% due to State and Federal taxes. This can be misleading as the US has an extensive and legal tax sheltering system. You should consider a much more realistic and actually better tool to compare against the rest of the OECD nations the US is 2.2% of total GDP as opposed to 3.4% in other OECD nations. No I must admit my source is not the greatest guy in the world,Igor Greenwald from SmartMoney(pretty much a failed guru) but who got out of the markets before the crashes of the past couple of years. But I have seen these numbers elsewhere...just can't find you any links now to support it...and since comparing one countries tax rates to another really is comparing apples to apple boxes, i think the total GPD is a better way to consider tax burden of corporations when making global tax comparisons...but then i am not in any way a tax-pert, so I might be wrong. I strongly advise only using true financial groups for internet research, as there are many, many "foundations" and "society" that speak out about tax policies, but who are rally nothing more than political groups. I don't trust any politicized group that tries to advertise an agenda at you....look at the guys and gals who make a living making money by working in money systems...they generally, but not always are,to busy to be politicized.And of course, I may be totally wrong about this, and if you have better info, I would be glad to see it.

It almost doesn't make sense, considering that their giving their employees paid vacation during the shut down and how much they overcharge for their products.

Greedy executives. I'm tired of seeing top-level execs do everything they can to preserve their own ginormous incomes at the expense of the common worker. If they did something with that money, like start a business and employ hundreds of people that would be one thing but all those greedy pricks do (most of them anyway) is hoard their money and buy stuff to flaunt their wealth.

I think what they're saying is that the employees are being required to use up 5 days of the vacation they've ALREADY been given for the year... it's not extra vacation time; they're just being told "this is the week you're going to be out of the office."

Cisco did the same thing at Christmas

Maybe if they worked on removing all the bloat and bugs from their software rather than the opposite, they might be able to make more money. I personally wouldn't mind seeing Adobe bought out. They've out-lived their usefulness. I use third-party alternatives for everything but Flash/Shockwave, which just gets worse with every new version.

I think its more along the lines of a factory shutdown. If you don't have a few hundred computers, lights, servers, etc. running for 7 days that can save you a few pennies. If they were forcing employees to use vacation days there would be a small uproar.

Damn, and my company buys more Adobe products than ever before these days too.

At least in California, I'm not sure about the rest of the US, I have heard that companies need to have cash on hand to cover all outstanding and unused vacation time. So shutting down and forcing a payed vacation reduces this cash burden and frees up money to be used elsewhere.

What a stupid comment to make.

If they lower the prices of the Creative Suite products (by a lot) they might see dramatic increase in purchases and a lot less pirating.

If I understand it correctly, they offer the employees a choice of having either paid or unpaid vacation (which will not deplete the paid one).

Taxes are high in US? Well, come live in Quebec province, in Canada! We pay 35% to 54% income taxes and the sale tax is 12.875%. Hoo, and you gotta wait endless hours at hospitals because they are underfunded!

yeah, so how's that Canadian nationalized health care workin out for ya?

We have 20% sales tax!

Higher taxes is NOT the problem, the ceconomy is where it is at because in in teh early 2000's our goverment was over spending and while giving massive tax breaks, while tax cuts are sweet for us in the short term , it stil has to get PAID FOR , if we don't start payign for the last 8 years of tax breaks and easy living then things will only get tougher

what state of teh US are you in ??? in texas sales tax is still locked around 8% , i seriously dont believe any wher in the US there would be 20% sales tax.

I think it's an erroneous and incorrect assumption that zingam is in a U.S. state... most of europe has a 15-20% VAT which is roughly equiv to U.S. 'sales tax.'

Yup, about VAT, go to any UK online computer shop and check out the difference in prices with and without vat.