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Italy has sued an international credit rating agency, S&P's I believe, because the agency did not take its artistic heritage, i.e. non-producing, pre-industrial artifacts from 500+ years ago, into account when the agency downgraded the country's credit rating, as if Italy would actually sell it on the international market in case of dire need for short-term funding.
No, pre-industrial tourism does not make an industrial economy.
For some 25 years now, Italy's politicians have been tinkering with constitutional and electoral reforms, but have done next to nothing to reform the economy, acting instead to preserve the system developed in the 1950s-1980s as the bulk of the Italian people patently refuse to adapt to the changing global environment.
At least they're well dressed.
In the meantime, by now two generations of poorly connected Italian young people have, by and large, been lost; those who cannot bear to leave family and/or are incapable of leaving for other reasons have stayed and suffered the decline, while tens of thousands each year vote with their feet in the hopes of saving themselves from a sinking ship, so to speak, following the example of Italy's former premier industrial company, Fiat, which now no longer exists and has its global headquarters under different names in the UK, Netherlands, and US.
You mean they refuse to accept becoming part of the money-making machine completely, refuse to become screws in the production line built by American/Trans-national corporations?
How unambitious of them to hang on to their intrinsic values such as classical music and remembering their cultural roots, how unentrepreneurial of them to hang on to their distinct architecture, instead of replacing it with bunch of faceless, standard boxes, i.e. "sky-scrapers")))))
Yeah, Vienna is one of those *prime losers,* but thanks lord it's still there, looking exactly as it did 30 years ago, because it's nice to know that there are still places in the old world where the eye can have a rest from those tall gray boxes blocking the sun, that you can still see the samples of great European craftsmanship. It's great that you still can see superior architecture, that the spirit of old historic places is still alive, not being completely smashed by "efficiency" of money-making machine, and it's great that those places are still not completely buried under tonnes of shiny "made in China" kind of goods made by cookie cutter.
Great post! I agree completely - it is possible to live in a modern progressive city without 'stomping' all over its history and tearing down its beautiful old buildings.
Great post! I agree completely - it is possible to live in a modern progressive city without 'stomping' all over its history and tearing down its beautiful old buildings.
never did I imply tearing down 500 year old building to build skyscrapers. It is his own interpretation.
Central Paris and Vienna are exquisit and I wouldn't tear down anything - but whether we dare to have something vastly new and different is another matter.
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