> Quite misleading. Since the US economy is quite a bit larger than Japan's,
> the gross US sum is greater which given increasing returns to research
> means the US can continue to maintain, if not strengthen, its industrial
> leadership (see Scherer). The corporatism or semicorportism of the
> keiretsu structure that you have extolled in a kind of reverse Orientalism
> (which has all along really simply been neo Listian economics) is not
> faring well.
Sheer size doesn't matter (unless you're a really large, radioactive lizard) because R & D is spread over many, many fields. Note that many EU/East Asian firms have research labs in the US, too. The US still has a world-class research base, but we lack well-developed industrial networks, especially for up-and-coming small and medium-size firms. As for the death of the keiretsu: do you have concrete evidence that these groups are dissolving their ties, throwing workers out the door and funding lavish stock buybacks for CEOs and Nikkei rentiers? They seem to be merging into super-keiretsu, is all (Mitsui+Sumitomo, DKB+Fuji+IBJ). Mitsubishi and Sanwa are going it alone for now, but that will probably change in the near future. All of them are globalizing their production base.
We need to pay attention to the keiretsu. They're very well-organized, efficient accumulation machines, and if we don't have a strategy to understand them, or even acknowledge that East Asia is run by them, we're not going to get very far in the global class struggle. They're a significant mutation in the relations of production which needs to be analyzed, not ignored or dismissed as irrelevant.
-- Dennis