What I mean is that the industries which prevail in a country are there because of a combination of many reasons. Most of them are historical and many/most of them unknown or at least poorly understood. Industries are ecosystems and they are culture. Policies play a role, but its a complicated role, interacting with all these things.
I'm objecting to this article on two levels. One, that it is at all possible to pick a result (even if it was defined) like innovation in manufacturing and relate it back to policies which can be then implemented somewhere else to achieve the same result. Policy isn't the only thing at play and
IE, if the US would understand like Germany understands that "innovation must result in productivity gains that are widespread, rather than concentrated in the high-tech sector of the moment." then GM would have good software like BMW does.
Second, I don't think the author even tries. WTF is he even saying. Who is Germany? What exactly does she understand? Does "understand" mean implement a policy? What policy? Are we talking about changing high school curriculum or tax codes? He's basically isn't saying anything while trying to give his audience the impression that some very obvious mistakes are being made needlessly.
The conclusions are populist and political, nearly implying a belligerent conspiracy.
"Germany’s innovations create and sustain good jobs across the spectrum of workers’ educational attainment; American innovation, at best, creates jobs at Amazon’s fulfillment centers and in Apple stores."
And it's mostly untrue, to the extent that weasely implications and unspecific statements can be true or untrue. The bones of his non-argument seems to be that German innovation creates good middle class manufacturing jobs while US innovation eliminates them. That's not true.
Amazon & Apple do not employ only low wage staff. They have nothing to do with displacing auto workers. They employ mostly people in "middle class" jobs. The German manufacturing sector isn't increasing employment in good old 1950s style manufacturing jobs either. They sector is employing engineers, accountants and such, just like Apple and Amazon.
I don't literally mean magic.