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Comment by mercy_dude | Hacker News Reader

Interesting choice but Italy doesn’t seem to be a great choice to me. In fact most of Southern Europe has endemic economic problems that can degenerate them completely to bankruptcy and other larger societal problems. If you have not followed the latest Italian politics I recommend you do so because they are (and have been for a while) in a mess. If a brexit like event happens, which I think if ever happens, Italy and Spain (along with Greece) would be the first to break up from EU.

I think countries such as France and Germany would be more stable choices but corporations are going to leverage workers lower wages to do anything and this is another case even if that means risking long term stability.

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Have mercy, my dude!

If you really follow Italian politics you'd know it's been like that for 200+ years -- that's how the place operates. And with all that going on they managed to create a world-class automotive industry, ship-building industry, industrial equipment industry, etc.

I have the feeling you are talking about Italy through the lens of western media, and not through first-hand knowledge or experience.

Industrially, Italy is much more like South Korea than Greece or Spain.

Oh I know that. Italians are brilliant people and much of what we have today including art, literature (not just technology) we owe it to them. But you must acknowledge economic grievances have consequences on the health of a nation and its populace. Italy is a favourite spring travel destination for me and over the decade I have seen how the people in that place, especially in South, have become poorer, become increasingly pessimistic and in general have turned to nihilism (not all but significant).

Wage is and has been low and the cost of living has been rising rapidly and young people (not all but many) are subscribing to very dangerous ideologies (both left and right). This stifling will only get worse, even in the middle of a tightening cycle, ECB is insisting they have to keep buying Italian bonds to keep them afloat, what signal does that send? Even euro dollar market is taking a hit partly because of the political turmoil in Italy.

There is a huge migrant population that are “ghettoized” so to speak and there doesn’t seem to be a long term plan with them.

Well, if you call what is going on in italy "turmoil" I must remind you that no one has assaulted major political sites in their capitol in a decade, at least in a major way. Anyway who ever said that turmoil is mutually exclusive with engineering prowess?

To be entirely honest what italy has in terms of political situation is an excess of stability, but i digress.

Anyway the real issue in my view is that the EU chips act's investment size is anemic compared to the recent equivalent US initiative. But still it's a step in the right direction and the amount allocated to italy is so comparatively small as to be negligible.

You’re making it sound as if Italy is a third-world country heading towards societal collapse. It’s the second largest manufacturer in the EU with a lot of companies producing high-tech products (Arduino is Italian, for example). It’s also a G7 member and the 3rd largest economy in the EU and Eurozone.

Well countries like people need opportunities even when things are not going well. If we take your logic once a country is on the down slope we would just abandon them? Personally I'm glad to hear of positive news coming out of Italy.

In many ways Italy is two countries put together. Northern Italy is a lot more like France or Germany.

There is a political party that started out with the ideal to "split" Italy into a more "productive" north and a "lazy" south.

Ironically quite a lot of the "lazy" southerners have migrated into the "productive north" because they jobs are there. I wonder what kind of immigration policies would such an socio political arrangement come up with. "Luckily" in the last few years they found a new enemy: other people with browner skin. And so the party grew from being a north only party to being a national party that got quite a few votes from people that until a few years ago were loudly despised because they were lazy southern italians.

Northern Italy is like France.

Southern Italy is like Greece.

It's not actually politically unstable like Chile, or Ukraine, more like UK - their leadership just 'collapsed' they'll be a new suit soon to replace the last guy.

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