> Have you heard of Bell Labs?

While I would tend to agree that private funding for research is way better in the US, Bell Labs is not necessarily a good example.

True, the tech. output of the outfit was amazing, but they had massive govt support (among other things, they were given an official monopoly by the USG).

It wasn't just the monopoly itself but their revenue and profit structure was driven by the research (cap ex and op ex were treated differently by the consent decree, and they had performance metrics to meet as demand grew). Research also had valuable P.R. value.