
In a Funk, Italy Sings an Aria of Disappointment - pg
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/world/europe/13italy.html?ei=5070&em=&en=538cd5a2ccd3cb18&ex=1197954000&pagewanted=all
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davidw
Hah, I thought pg might like that one, but refrained from posting it myself
because it didn't seem relevant enough.

It's a very accurate portrayal of what's going wrong there right now, and at
the same time avoids being one of those articles that just seeks dirt and
dishes it (it would be easy to paint any place like a dump if you only report
the negatives).

It's all the more heartbreaking, because there really are a lot of people
doing interesting, creative, entrepreneurial things, but they are completely
strangled by incompetent or actively malicious bureaucracies.

I do think that, long term, they'll do ok, but who knows how long "long term"
may be - 5 years? 10? 50? 100?

~~~
Kaizyn
'Long term' will be never if they don't fix the corruption and bad government
problems.

------
Kaizyn
An interesting statistic here was that only 36 per cent of Italians trust
their government. US's Congress currently has approval ratings hovering in the
20's. Do you think that a poll would show that even 30 percent of the US
people trust their government?

------
downer
_"Doubt clouds the family itself: 70 percent of Italians between 20 and 30
still live at home, condemning the young to an extended and underproductive
adolescence."_

Cost of living. In the U.S., most college graduates can't afford to live on
their own in major cities. Jobs require ever-more qualifications and advanced
degrees. Productivity goes out the door and escapism comes in when you're
stuck with your parents.

That housing bubble was _horrible_ for the economy. Far from a sign of good
things happening, it meant owning their own home was out of reach for the vast
majority of young people. The amount of productivity and joie de vivre lost
cannot be overestimated. Being stuck living with people you don't want to live
with is toxic (that includes non-family members, too).

~~~
davidw
Housing has always been relatively expensive in Italy, with 60 million people
in an area slightly smaller than California. But the problems go far beyond
that, unfortunately. In my opinion, they really center around a broken
political system that has neither managed the economy well, nor simply left
the economy to its own devices without interference.

It costs something like 10,000 Euro to open the equivalent of an LLC in Italy,
between mandatory capital requirements, legal fees, and notaries that eat up
thousands of euros at a go.

