Many people feel compelled to ignore what is in plain sight. But by using commonplace experiences, it is possible to convey to them a message of faith in changes that they consider impossible. This volume, born from comparisons with the developed countries to which we frequently refer, addresses the key issues of public expenditure and state functioning. It traces an inductive (rather than deductive) path from the Centre to the South to the North of Italy with the intention of grappling with some thorny issues: the lack of public expenditure evaluation, which deprives the country of vital feedback; the often abominable condition of government jobs; the limits of an emphasis on technicality; the requirements for the liberalization of the South; the productive challenges emerging from the competition with Europe; and the financing of political parties. The underlying theme is the attempt to gradually identify various aspects of the ‘maladie d'amour’ that afflicts the country, to understand its psychological motivations, both historical and contemporary, and to systematically determine a series of small and large practical policies within the reach of citizens, which by investing the country with a little more confidence in its abilities, can encourage it to strive towards overcoming a particularly rough patch in its long history.