Instead in Italy we say that the government is poor but its citizens are rich [0]. A country of shopkeeper and small business owners never too keen to pay duties to government and always looking for some scheme to game welfare/subsidies.

Italian median / mean wealth by person: 107,315 / 221,370 euro

Germany median / mean wealth by person: 66,735 / 256,179 euro

Italy by capita has 48k euro of public debt vs 30k by capita of Germany

[]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...

[0]: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/indagine-famiglie/...