ABSTRACT
Countries that display high levels of economic innovation and social ingenuity are the exception rather than the rule. One is that the general will of the state can intervene in an economy to guarantee growth and prosperity or else halt and reverse an otherwise irreversible decline of industry sectors and social groups. Humor, wit, irony, wryness, intellectual ambidexterity, and epigrammatic and epigrammatological behavior are key indicators of high levels of economic efficiency, technological creativity, and social ingenuity. The economic relationship of builder and shoemaker operates not so that each can be equalized or ‘made the same’ but so that things may exist – at least in a dynamic sense. The French physician Francois Quesnay created a table of economic relationships that outlined production and consumption in a balance that was liable to be upset by government taxes and spending, leading in turn to a decline in the national product.
