Obama Versus Romney Offers a Clash of Capitalisms – Good article for role of R&D

I found this article very interesting, have a look at it. It offers a nice comparison of the core of the growth policies of the two contenders for the US presidency. The discussion about R&D spending is very good and here are two paragraphs from it (my emphasis in the next paragraph):

“Who can argue with R&D spending, the main engine of innovation? Both Obama and Romney are for making the R&D tax credit permanent. But Congress, after letting the R&D tax credit expire at the end of 2011, has yet to renew it. In 1992, the credit was the world’s most generous; by 2008, it was only the 24th most generous, and the rate of growth in business R&D spending has lagged that of many national competitors.

U.S. companies have been the major drivers in R&D spending (the government’s share of total R&D, which was 26 percent in 2008, peaked in 1964 at 67 percent), but business R&D spending as a proportion of gross domestic product has stayed relatively flat in the U.S. over the last decade. Moreover, just as with capital investment, U.S. companies are spending more of their R&D money overseas: From 1998 to 2008, U.S. corporate R&D overseas expanded at more than 2 1/2 times the rate at home.”