The U.S. invests less than
>everyone else, for sure, but we invest better!
As already noted in the case of R&D, not in gross terms, and capital per worker remains highest in the US (no?), though growth rates have been higher elsewhere as is the %of GDP devoted to R&D in other countries (South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, etc).
I see that what is driving all this is the thesis that US style stock markets will not tolerate the maintainence of capital-using, large scale, high volume 'hard' industries in which process improvements are patiently developed, yet these industries are those in which there is high gross mfg. volume, revenue and (good paying) employment. The US rentier based financial structure for which net revenue is the bottom line is a disaster for the American working class. Financial structure indeed matters.
And it does seem true that the US financial system is structured to allow the disgorging of cash from mature industries (the Michael Jensen problem discussed in *Wall Street*) and the gambling of that capital in pursuit of huge product innovation pay offs (discussed by Robt Teitelman in Profits of Science, noted as well by Mowery and Rosenberg and many others)--microprocessors and innovative software, speciality chemicals, new drugs, diagnostic devices, a whole new bevy of genetic tests that will undergird almost all medicine in the 21st century once privacy and confidentiality law is developed, etc.
So I agree that there are real differences in capitalist systems, which may well be rooted in differences in financial structures. At least, *Wall Street* taught me the importance of finance, so often dismissed by production-obsessed Marxists.
Yours, Rakesh