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Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

There's also the prolific government corruption, endemic organized crime, and an aging population which brings a whole suite of sociological problems (conservative politics and social structures, poor social services for anyone not a senior, the younger generation will be unable to support the needs of the retired/elderly generation so economic collapse is inevitable.)

Meanwhile the police are driving around in lambos (yes, they're "donated"; the exorbitant maintenance / fuel / tire costs are not.)

Whenever a country's young people are not sticking around, that's a sign things are fucked. These people want to "fix" things by attracting people with money, because they don't want to fix the actual problems with their country.

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Corruption in Italy is not everywhere, and organized crime is only present and vocal in some areas.

Lamborghini from time to time apparently donates a few vehicles for service - to be used as an alternative to helicopters when feasible.

Young people are exactly the demographic that less probably will want to remain in the remote corners of the territory, with probably less service than one drugstore and a church - those places in which more easily these special properties are for sale.

in the US midwest: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-census-illin...

in the great plains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plai...

So what is Italy’s main economy at this point, just tourism? I was also under the impression the a large number of immigrants are moving there to do all the odd jobs.

A lot of people get the idea that Italy is poor and only running on tourism and olive oil from popular media, but it's actually a complex economy with lots of high tech exports. The biggest exports are medical and engineering products[0]. There's a lot of problems to be sure, but it's still a competitive, high tech economy, especially in the north.

[0]https://oec.world/en/profile/country/ita/

I believe Northern Italy has a good economy, the South Seems to be where the issues are.

The GDP per capita in Northern Italy is in general over or around 30k€; in Southern Italy below or around 20k€.

Italy is a big exporter of mechatronic products. It is the second ( or third depending on sources) manufacturing economy in Europe just after Germany. Its engineering culture has always been very strong and will stay strong for a long time to come.

One day I noticed nearly all of my food comes from Italy. They are also famous for clothes, and that seems to hold true as well - my best jacket is italian.

Here's a visualization of Italy's exports:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/It...

Ice hockey fans take note: this includes Zamboni! Or, used to — not up on the modern lore.

I suggest you take a look at the "black marble" (Earth at night from space), in the European area. You will see that together with the extended megalopolis Lille-Antwerpen-Liège up to the Bonn-Duisburg-Dortmund aggregations, the most noticeable extended megalopolis is the Padanian valley. It is not tourism to drive that.

Who are you to make such claims ? Are you an Italian, do you live in Italy? Your claims seem just cliche rather than based on actual arguments. I always understood that HN audience was against these kind of posts.

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