[peoplewindow]

Such high taxes and levels of corruption are hard to describe as "capitalism" of any form. Those are attributes much more associated with communism.

I would note that the EU's Vice President and head of foreign affairs is an Italian woman ... and former member of the Italian communist party.

[klokoman]

Yes, in fact I was talking about crony-capitalism. Also consider the fact that Italy is the country where a communist party got the largest share of the popular vote, ever.

But fun thing is that after ww2 many communists in Italy didn't really like economic central planning bcause it felt too fascist. So, they were communist but they didn't practice communism to the full extent. Italy also used to have classical liberals like Einaudi who even became president for many years, and kept politics in check. Sadly, I noticed that we are moving towards statist ideas more and more, with people expecting the State to solve everything and regulate all aspects of life. It's scary. Even people like Berlusconi or Salvini, while right wing, still have a lot of statism in them, even considering just what they appear to be.