It's the same, or maybe even worse in Germany.

On a previous job I was working on a component for the project that was a well known Audi model. In 18 months, Audi replaced the manager for that project 3 times.

Managerial careers in German corps are a revolving door where incompetents go in, do nothing, slap the prestigious company name in their resume, then, when the shit hits the fan, jump ship to next prestigious company. Rinse and repeat.

The American economy has been swallowed up by "management as a profession" since Frederick Winslow Taylor in the late 1800s.

You're all late to the party.

Isn't that the point the article is making?

That in late-stage capitalism, all actual work is invariably outsourced, with only management and profits retained?

I'm not sure I personally see the link to outsourcing. But I do agree with the quote in the OP that (in my own words) once innovation is no longer the main differentiator you typically see the “power and money people” take over. So I guess you could say that Americans should count themselves lucky that they still have large sections of the economy where innovation is the differentiator.

> once innovation is no longer the main differentiator you typically see the “power and money people” take over.

Someone contrasting engineering culture at Tesla and current "old auto", described part of the latter as being fine with someone else making the actual vehicle, and then just slapping a brand on it. Suggesting causality can go the other way too - innovation is still a differentiator, but is deemphasized by a management culture focused elsewhere.

Re: the link to outsourcing - is it not clear? Without scapegoating the cheaper external workers - as the business gets commodified, management sees less and less of the value in the internal expertise and institutional memory.

You start to see a 50-year-old engineer not as a battle-hardened mentor who can be a leader for your teams and instead as a highly-paid shambling pile with less "productivity" than a fresh grad.