Sorry, but as Italian I feel that there is a little bit of bias in this statement.
I would encourage you to look at the ratio of innovation over funding in Italy compared with the USA, please define "innovation" in whichever way you like the best.
In Italy you will never have something like Snapchat nor AirBnB, but arguably the work done in our laboratories are pretty advanced and technical also in the internet and space exploration field, however we don't get much cover.
What is true, however is that most of the technology advancement in Italy is done in the north, in the same way that most of the technology advancement in the US is not done in the Midwest
The "wealthiest" person alive today is some happy accountant in middle America with a great salary, good health, and happy family. Stable and well compensated work with plenty of leisure time and zero want for basic necessities.
And on top of all that, you have these crazily ambitious weirdos absolutely killing themselves to deliver to you all these cool toys and convenient services just to capture outsized economic surplus. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.
A little bit offtopic:
Well, Italy is economically not at the top and South Italy even much worse. So, I just wonder if this is a healthy attitute.
Even on micro level: If you don't have ambitions besides friends/family, this is very sad. At least I couldn't imagine living like that.
There was an interesting quote from Max Levchin, can't find it, will edit later. It was something like this: "Interviewer: Why do you keep founding companies/push yourself? Levchin: Well, you sleep 8 hours a day. Then you play 2 hours with your children, spend 1 hour with your wife. Wtf do you do the remaining 13 hours?" This is actually a nice summary.
And this is the similar reason why people are defined by their education. It's just a small amount of years that elivate your value. It will be strange to miss the opportunity without a very good reason.
8 hours sleep, 2 hours with children, 1 hour with wife, 10 hours doing work and commuting to support them? 3 hours extra to exercise, doing various errands, and maybe more quality time with your wife. Not that I don't understand what original quote meant to say, but you operate a little different when don't have a shitload of money.
While this is not ideal (I think 1 and 2 are part of the reasons many Italian lack the ambition Americans have), it's a very good way to live a very decent life as an individual. At a macro level I believe pushing on 1 and 2 will kill your economy, on a micro level (aka if I was a shrink), I would strongly advise them.
P.s. of course, 1 and 2 work well in a world where you have USA, where people do kill themselves to deliver loads of innovation to the whole planet (see: internet, space exploration, etc.).
P.p.s. of course USA works well because it attracted talent across the world to deliver loads of innovation (see: immigrants)