Italy Is Facing The Most Serious Economic Crisis Since The Postwar Period
By Francis Allenby
26 May, 2014
Countercurrents.org
The current Italian political and economic situation is the most serious since the last postwar.
In the past, because of the world wars, there have been some extremely critical periods. But, as far as anyone can remember, never, until now, in time of peace, it has been recorded a public unease of this kind.
According to ISTAT, the National Institute of Statistics, the deficit / GDP of this year has been estimated at a rate of 3%. The rate of unemployment in Italy, relative to March 2014, was 12.7% . The concentration of family poverty, relative to the end of 2012, was 17.3 %, with the highest peak in the South (18%). Families arriving to the end of the month with difficulty or great difficulty, in 2008 , reached a total of 37.8 %, with the highest peak in the South (49.1%) and in the isles of Sardinia and Sicily (51, 9 % ).
These figures are alarming, but not enough to give an idea of the real situation in the Country.
Italian families have turned down, disturbingly, their standards of living, reducing consumptions. If people consume less, of course, the industries suffer, since they live on purchases. No one buys and many factories shut down, increasing the percentage of unemployeds: it is a vicious circle, a snake biting its own tail, a deviant path leading to an inevitable decline.
Young people face the future with little or no hope to find a job. The work, in Italy, has always been, almost constantly, subject to factors that have nothing to deal with merit: they have more to deal, instead, with the individual's ability to know how to juggle in the swamp of bureaucracy, including doors that open only with a specific password. The current situation is increasingly becoming gangrenous and even the solutions, once provided by the internal migration, from south to north, are progressively dwindling. It remains the hope of emigration abroad, but even this implies more uncertainties rather than certainties.
The most worrying element is linked to the scary decay of the working people: people find themselves aged forty or fifty without a profession or, what is worse, without having ever had a profession. This, more than many other factors, is producing some alarming unbalances: many persons develop mental disorders, due to the crisis of identity, to the lack of self-esteem; many times this leads to violence or to self-harm, to the point of suicide.
Crime is proliferating: muggings, robberies, assaults, murders. There is always drug dealing and prostitution, even child prostitution. It has emerged, recently, that many Italian teenage girls, female students in high-schools, wanting to be still part of the group, decide to join child prostitution in order to make money.
This storm is dragging with it many Italian families, which are now reduced to begging. Such a cruel crisis, in fact, cannot but affect more intensely the most vulnerable ones: the social groups with a modest standard of living, which have now become poor, and the retirees.
If you walk in the streets of Italian cities, primarily the capitals, you can see people of all ages, especially pensioners, who rummage into trash cans to find something to eat or some clothes; when the open-air markets close there are young and old people, waiting to pick up the remaining unsold goods: vegetables, fruit, scraps of meat.
"This is all I have left, after a life spent working," says Rocco, a retiree, while he is weeping.
"We feel so sorry ," a retailer says. " If we don’t help each other, who will? "
The soup kitchens, run by the Catholic churches, are getting busier: this is because the number of paupers is growing at a frightening degree, as well as those who sleep in the dorms, having lost their housing.
The political situation has been in a state of emergency for ten years: there cannot be new elections, because the central government has to cope with this crisis and they cannot afford unnecessary expenses for the election or for a period of absence of ruling. The current government is headed by Matteo Renzi, from the Democratic Party.
Young Mr. Renzi got noticed, in the political sphere, for his innovative ideas and his proposal for a change. "We have to scrap what is no longer needed ," he said in the beginning of his career. This term had earned him the nickname of ' Demolition man '. Nevertheless, now, he has to manage a state, a state which has bankrupted, and it is not easy. To begin with he has allocated a bonus of € 80 on the payroll of Italians. This bonus does not cover all workers, but only those who are regular employees, or of a similar category, with an income between 8,145 and 26 thousand euros (about 10 million people). However, people who are paid less than € 8,145 will not get the bonus, as their earnings are so unimportant that they have not to pay the personal income tax. The bonus also does not cover the retirees. Today the government announced that the bonus will be extended to the unemployeds, but only those who receive an allowance, namely the redundant workers. All this keeping in mind that Italy does not issue, and has never issued, any welfare payment for jobless. Many people defined this initiative 'a palliative for a dying person'. A nice record for a Country that has ratified, in its Constitution, that ‘work is a right’ for all: a right that has never been applied.
It seems, therefore, that they have realized that there is an emergency but, as usual, the gap between what happens in the Hill and what happens among the people is unbridgeable.
Furthermore must be recorded, then and there, the growth of many popular phenomena.
There is the birth of the Five Stars Movement, led by former comedian Beppe Grillo who, just like the incorruptible Robespierre, became the spokesman of popular discontent, founding a political group of volunteers who entered the Parliament in the last election: he asserts his dissention from the benches of the opposition, but especially from the squares .
Recently, there has also been a spontaneous phenomenon called ' the pitchforks ': a manifestation of self- association , made up by common people, without a political color, tired and exasperated by the treatment of the state, who met to protest in every square of Italy, declaring their dissatisfaction.
To the north, finally, there is the historic political group of the ' North League ', which would like to split the north of Italy (‘more productive’, they say) from the south (a ' ball and chain ') . On the other hand, in the South, there has been the naissance of the New Bourbon Movement, claiming the independence of South from Italy, for historical and social reasons .
The Country, in conclusion, seems to be more and more disconnected , disjointed before the emergency: it was a fictitious union that, over the years, has kept, artificially, the things glued together because of the (relative) economic prosperity; everything has, then, cleaved when the conditions of this union have failed .
Self-employed people often complain against public officials, accused of making advantage of too many privileges, while individuals are crushed by taxes. But, although this is basically correct on paper, given the circumstances, the crisis really affects everyone, without distinction .
As usual, when the bread is scarce, the ones still alive are fighting each other for the only crumb left. All this is not fully understood by the state.
At the moment there are no other solutions, beyond those of current politics. But nothing will change if the state does not revise some points from which it does not withdraw, like the changes in the Constitution , or certain laws ruling work and the economy, as well as bureaucratic apparatus. If the government would apply these changes it would demonstrate, at least, a bit of good will.
Francis Allenby was born in Taranto, in 1960. He got the certificate of schoolteacher, but never practised teaching and preferred earning his living with all sorts of jobs. He started painting as a boy and refined his technique at an Art studio. He writes articles, as a free commentator, and novels. Francis Allenby has published a collection of short gothic stories, THE TALES OF THE STORM, and a novel in Italian: LO STOLTO DI CARDIZZINI (The fool of Cardizzini). Email: [email protected]
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