Germany, Italy and France appear to possess less dynamism than do the U.S. and the others.

After a major loss of dynamism in the 1960s, productivity growth rates began dropping in most countries, falling by half in the U.S. in the 1970s and more or less ceasing altogether in France, Germany and Britain in the late 1990s.

That obviously includes France, Germany, and Italy, who are offering forces as part of this coalition and all the other member states as well.

What brought mass innovation to a nation was not scientific advances - its own or others' - but 'economic dynamism': the desire and the space to innovate.

In Greece, Italy and, to a lesser extent, France, unsustainable tax cuts and spending sprees added to households' estimates of their private wealth relative to their wage income.

Mass prosperity came with the mass innovation that sprung up in 1815 in Britain, soon after in America, and later in Germany and France: It brought sustained growth to these nations - also to nations with entrepreneurs willing and able to copy the innovations.