The inevitable and tragic decline of Italy

The Washington Examiner reports:

Italy has very low birth rates and one of the world’s toughest laws limiting employers’ ability to fire employees. Those are goals of the environmental left and the social democratic left. So how well is that working out? Not well at all, says European journalist Edward Hugh in a blog post headlined “The Italian Runaway Train.” Italy’s working age population is declining and its government debt, currently 136 percent of gross domestic product, is increasing. The center-right and center-left governments over the last 20 years have passed budgets which balance if you don’t count debt service, but debt service is inexorably increasing.

A sad story.