[foxrob92]

I half with you - when you have a money printing machine (a monopoly), it's easier to justify spending money on R+D.

But at the same time, we've seen a decline in corporate R+D since the start of the neoliberal era - the article mentions that this started at around Nixon's time. This is the period of time where Milton Friedman's ideas started to gain widespread acceptance:

>“there is one and only one social responsibility of business– to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game,”

Many organisations have taken the idea of "profits over everything", and interpreted it as "quarterly profits over everything". R+D labs don't result in quarterly profits. Much of the research ends up being profitable years down the track. So corporate R+D is killed off.