The U.S. military is not a "first world" anything it like when your uncle blowing the medical insurance money and rent on Mexican fireworks. [It is awesome ]
of the big four medical research firms and by big I mean bigger than most economies Pfizer is the only "american" one but by their nature they are all transnational, Novartis[Swiss], Sanofi [French] and GlaxoSmithKline [British].
the biggest research grant giver in america is DARPA [the pentagon] I see it as a military distortion of academic life.
I see economies in a evo-eco mode. The buffet [Not Buffet] style of picking and choosing what you like from an economy rarely works. High capital gains and low corporate taxes is integral to how the Canadian economy works.
-oh and the cato institute is run by easy answer magic bullet dummies :)