Government among the largest and most expensive for it's size, with people severely unhappy:
""It's a country that has lost a little of its will for the future," said Walter Veltroni, Rome's mayor and a possible future prime minister. "There is more fear than hope."
The problems are, for the most part, not new - and that is the problem: They have simply caught up to Italy over many years to the point that no one seems clear how change can come - or if it is possible anymore at all.
Italy has long charted its own way of belonging to Europe, struggling like few other countries with fractured politics, uneven growth, organized crime and a tenuous sense of nationhood.
But frustration is rising that these old weaknesses are still no better, and in some cases worse, as the world outside outpaces it: In 1987, Italy celebrated economic parity with Britain. Now Spain, which had joined the European Union only the year before, may soon overtake Italy.
Its low-tech way of life may enthrall tourists, but Internet use and commerce here are among the lowest in Europe, as are wages, foreign investment and growth. Pensions, public debt, the cost of government are among the highest.
Doubt clouds the family itself: 70 percent of Italians from the ages of 20 to 30 still live at home, condemning the young to an extended and underproductive adolescence. Many of the brightest, like the poorest a century ago, leave Italy entirely.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/12/news/italy.php
""It's a country that has lost a little of its will for the future," said Walter Veltroni, Rome's mayor and a possible future prime minister. "There is more fear than hope."
The problems are, for the most part, not new - and that is the problem: They have simply caught up to Italy over many years to the point that no one seems clear how change can come - or if it is possible anymore at all.
Italy has long charted its own way of belonging to Europe, struggling like few other countries with fractured politics, uneven growth, organized crime and a tenuous sense of nationhood.
But frustration is rising that these old weaknesses are still no better, and in some cases worse, as the world outside outpaces it: In 1987, Italy celebrated economic parity with Britain. Now Spain, which had joined the European Union only the year before, may soon overtake Italy.
Its low-tech way of life may enthrall tourists, but Internet use and commerce here are among the lowest in Europe, as are wages, foreign investment and growth. Pensions, public debt, the cost of government are among the highest.
Doubt clouds the family itself: 70 percent of Italians from the ages of 20 to 30 still live at home, condemning the young to an extended and underproductive adolescence. Many of the brightest, like the poorest a century ago, leave Italy entirely.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/12/news/italy.php
