Rich areas have giant banks and global corporations while poor areas must make do with small firms. Smallness simply signals a lack of development. Politically, leftists may provide jobs and spread income more equally, but their egalitarian regimes wind up monopolizing power and bureaucratizing every area of life. You must choose freedom or equality. Finally, in economic systems, it's either competition or cooperation.
Cooperation dulls the competitive instinct.
Competition dissolves common bonds. The two mix like sugar and gasoline. The Emilian model, however, shows that there's more to life than what's been dreamed of in our cold war philosophies. But co-ops haven't prevented the region from increasing its share of international exports. Unemployment, at just 4.7 percent, is even lower than the jobless rate in Lombardy and Piedmont, Northern Italy's corporate heartland.