The high rates of return offered by the newer technologies are largely the result of labor cost displacement, and because it is more costly to dismiss workers in Europe and Japan, the rate of return on the same equipment is correspondingly less there than in the United States.
Here, labor displacement is more readily countenanced both by law and by culture, facilitating the adoption of technology that raises standards of living over time. There, of course, has been a substantial amount of labor-displacing investment in Europe to obviate expensive increased employment as their economies grow.