ajm101 wrote, " if I was looking at his link for actual business investment (St. Louis Fed (FRED): Net domestic investment: Private: Domestic business/Gross Domestic Product | FRED) the year 1980 looks like the start of a trend. I wonder what happened."

Good question.

Let's look at two related charts.

All Employees, Manufacturing
St. Louis Fed (FRED): All Employees, Manufacturing (MANEMP) | FRED

Manufacturing Sector: Real Sectoral Output for All Workers
St. Louis Fed (FRED): Manufacturing Sector: Real Sectoral Output for All Workers (OUTMS) | FRED

The trend in business investment from 1980 to the present is generally downward. Investment was strong between 1990 - 2000 which included the robotics, telecom and internet buildout. Real output in manufacturing increased during those years.

Manufacturing employment dramatically declined, especially after 2000. Real output stagnated after the 2008-9 recession as manufacturing shifted to China. Current output is slightly lower than in 2017.

The OP in this thread is about the shift of management toward financialization instead of production.

I was shocked to read in a friend's MBA management textbook that the objective of any corporation is to maximize shareholder value. Not innovation, not producing a quality product, not meeting customer needs, not maintaining and expanding productive capacity.

With management trained to that standard, it's no wonder that they shifted production to China instead of maintaining their American factories and sold out to private equity investors who borrowed against company assets to buy the company, milked it, then ran it into the ground.

Wendy