Governments, too, should think strategically about shifting their spending away from tangible infrastructure like roads and buildings, and toward intangibles like education and research and development.
It is no secret that the US and Europe, combined, spend more than $250 billion of public funds annually on R&D to maintain their leading positions. Likewise, a key driver of rapid development in countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea has been their strategic decision to shift public expenditure away from hard infrastructure and toward the “soft” infrastructure needed to build and sustain a knowledge economy. Likewise, the British government spends markedly more of its budget on such intangibles than on tangible assets. Link