One more thought about Italy, after two weeks there this month …

Maybe we were not looking hard enough, or we did not recognize the signs, but we did not see or feel the economic distress going on there, like many areas of the Eurozone.

No bums under bridges, no one rooting around dumpsters, almost no beggars except for the professionals. At no time and in no place did we see the abject poverty of parts of Sri Lanka or Mexico, to name two countries we know first-hand.

What to make of this?

Clearly, things have been better, in Italy.

–Unemployment there, at the end of 2012, was at 10.2 percent, higher than it was for most of the past decade and almost double Germany’s 5.5 percent — but less than half that of Spain or Greece, who are in the 24-25 percent range, as seen in this chart.

–Youth unemployment is quite high in Italy, the numbers say, at 36.9 in the fourth quarter of 2012 and anecdotal evidence suggests it is worse now than it was then.

Why, then, the sense that people are still eating in restaurants, still driving, still well-dressed?

Perhaps it is social programs, and perhaps the costs of those are running out of control and will be issues later, and maybe sooner than later.

But back to what our lying eyes told us: Italy is not in the hurt locker in ways easily seen by outsiders.

Perhaps that makes it not as awful for those experiencing hard times, and perhaps it is difficult on parents who have grown children still living at home.

But to a visitor … we can’t quite see it. It remains a land of, apparently, la dolce vita.

And the good news there? A seemingly prosperous Italy is a country tourists will want to see, and they spend a lot of money there, and will continue to do so.