Personally, I buy lots of organic food products from Italy (e.g. laselva-bio.eu) as well as clothes (e.g. slowear.it), and for a simple reason: They're the best on the market.
You have endorsed the quality of Italian products made by private business enterprises. To keep this discussion on topic for Hacker News (ahem), I wonder what you think about how well the current Italian governmental administration is allowing business owners like that to succeed. The overall economic growth figures for Italy reported in the submitted article suggest that the preferences of consumers like you are not sustaining steady economic growth in Italy. Could that be the result of government mismanagement?
It seems like exports of lucrative sectors are still strong in Italy. Of course, as in most europe, taxation is heavy. The main factor hindering growth seems to be high wages.
I think that non-wage labour costs can be an important factor. I think they are quite high across Europe. Could anyone tell the numbers for Italy? (for example: in Poland a net wage of 2700 PLN (~ $1000) is a gross wage of 4500 PLN (~ $1650)).
You have endorsed the quality of Italian products made by private business enterprises. To keep this discussion on topic for Hacker News (ahem), I wonder what you think about how well the current Italian governmental administration is allowing business owners like that to succeed. The overall economic growth figures for Italy reported in the submitted article suggest that the preferences of consumers like you are not sustaining steady economic growth in Italy. Could that be the result of government mismanagement?