"It is pure craziness what Politics is doing in our country (Italy, T.'s n.): that is, investing little and bad in research, letting the brightest minds escape, not rewarding excellence, and failing to attract foreign researchers. Not doing, that is, what is being done in Soccer, where Italy is in the first places, exactly because Soccer clubs deploy the best players, their selection is based on their merits, the best ones are very highly paid to avoid them to leave, and the best players are sought abroad to make the team a winning one. And even the coach, if (s)he does not bring home results, gets fired.
To sum it up, we in Italy occupy ourselves much more in the selection of feet than in the selection of brains."
Piero Angela, journalist, anchorman and science reporter
I would love to have lived in Italy, I would love to have lived in France. But at the time when I was doing more corporate work that would merit opening a foreign office, the business climate was incredibly hostile to foreign corporations. If the public would stop regarding foreign companies as evil and not establish so many regulations, money would pour in to Europe - and that would lead to a lot more research and scientists getting paid more.
Of course, I live in California, which is far worse than any country in Europe about business. So if I can't fix the problem here, my advice for Italy certainly does not have much value.