With all the bad publicity of mafia, Naples’ mismanagement, Berlusconi&Co it’s not difficult to understand why that is. I remember on my first day of my previous work… at lunch time, the usual remarks or observations about Italian politics and economy. Even the Bulgarian waiter in a “not so splendid” UK town, South end on Sea precisely, had a few jokes about it.
Everywhere I go I seem to have the role of Italian ambassador and I’m told all sorts of observations about the country as if I had to be responsible for everything… However many people seem to have severe misconceptions in mind and seem to lack any critical thinking. They base their opinions solely on what is portrayed on the mainstream media.
It seems that the reputation of Italy has been pretty low in the last few years and I have always tried to make people understand that what the media portray is not necessarily the truth. I worked in the media, incidentally and I know that there’s generally an “agenda” to carry on. It’s normal unfortunately, as news have to create easy stories. Stories people want to believe in.
Certainly, whatever I write might be incorrect and expresses my personal point of view, but at least I am stating that clearly. Whenever one reads something, anyone should always bear in mind that what is written represents one person’s point of view. Even if it is written in a passive, unpersonalized way. Anyway thanks for pointing out my mistakes in your comments!
I would like to start by saying that our politicians are not the best representative of our culture, however, they are not all corrupted and they have passed good laws as well in the recent past. So, it’s not all bad…pretty bland observation I know, but for every corrupted one, there is almost a very honest and hard working one, even in politics.
I’m “proud” that Italy has been one of the first country to pass laws against smoking in public places, banned the use of plastic bags, has invested on renewable energies while the population voted against nuclear power plants and against the privatization of public water. Citizens protest for cancer causing incinerators and care about the ingredients in the food they buy. None seem to mind that many countries, among which the well regarded Germany, France, Benelux, Scandinavian nations and Switzerland pollute heavily and irreversibly the environment with radioactive material. None seem to mind that France polluted the oceans with extensive nuclear tests for example.
I had well educated American-British friends who told me that water is just a commodity, therefore should be treated as such in economic terms, but actually I’m very happy that in the Italian culture we still have values that go beyond money. Water is not like any other commodity. It is an essential public good that every species need to survive, not a commodity to make profits on. Life is more important than human-created money (which has no intrinsic value per se).
Once I attended a lecture from a famous Harvard professor in London on the value of money and he was pointing out that actually money spoils certain human interactions or feelings like the one of gratitude or the relation of friendships, etc. He conducted studies to outline that if you reward with money a given action (writing thank you notes for example) than who writes them wouldn’t learn the true value behind that action… we, clumsy Italians, learn these kind of things at kinder garden, yet Harvard is always considered the best university in the world, no question asked and this talk was organized by the London School of Economics…and the audience seemed genuinely impressed by these findings. If this is the level of human values, I thought back then, perhaps those who are now writing the rules of international economy might not have the sufficient human depth to do it on a broad scale…
Back to the reasons why I’m writing this post, which perhaps are going to be confused because I would have many things to say…let’s start with misconception number 1: Italians don’t pay their taxes and that’s why the public debt is so huge!
My belief is that they actually pay too much taxes and what they avoid is only for survival. The real taxation in Italy is extremely high (and unfair as it is not intelligently reinvested). It disincentives small businesses because both bureaucracy and taxation is too high. You pay taxes on taxes (like VAT on the taxes on the energy bill to give you a practical example), income tax of 50% or more, petrol tax of 70%, VAT of 21% on the 50% income you had left from the previous taxes, annual road tax, insurances, motorway tax (which was paid by Italians and then privatized!) then in order to pay taxes one has to pay the accountant which operates on behalf of the State, so the absurdity is that one has to pay a kind of “tax” to pay one’s taxes. There are taxes on the bank accounts and every contract, to be valid has to have a tax paid on it, plus we have to pay official lawyers to validate the contracts, which again is another kind of indirect tax. I could go on and on because there are more taxes that the average citizen is asked to pay on a daily basis. Seriously, if one were to count all taxation, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were to reach 80% of an average salary. With your 20% left, you are allowed to pay rent, utilities and food. When you go abroad, they still think you don’t pay taxes! Thank you very much.
As per tax avoidance, in general, I would address instead the big evaders, in every country: multinational companies (names like Google, Starbucks, Amazon, Vodafone, international hotel chains, McDo, Visa-Mastercard, etc.) with headquarters in tax heavens as well as private banks.
They steal from society more than any small individual could possibly do, so instead of focusing on the latter, Europeans should focus their fair anger and keen attention to the biggest fishes and then from there we can look down.
Misconception number 2. The PIGS economy are a burden for Europe…wow I don’t even know where to start about this…first I would like to point out that even just to keep referring to countries as pigs is disparaging and offensive. It’s not simply an acronym, because one could arrange the letter differently…but anyway, it is only a linguistic observation (but I saw another article on the Guardian today). So much for “We are not so direct and rude like those Southerners who speak with their hands” (without considering that what seems politeness is simply a sleek way to avoid any confrontation, UK-style, only to stub you in the back at the first chance).
Italy’s financial contribution to the EU is more than what it receives back according to official figures, contrary to other small Northern European countries (Benelux e.g.)…why is that the case then if the Italian State is in so much debt? Incidentally, before the EU, I don’t think that Bruxell had much going on (I should probably delete this paragraph ^_^)
Every country has public debts and every time a loan is given to any country, it’s not that they receive the money for free. The borrower has to pay it back with high interests. So it’s actually a very profitable investment for the lenders, not an act of charity.
Hence, please stop saying that the Norther European taxpayers have to pay for these debts in any sort of way like many times newspaper looking for sensationalism write. If anything, foreign banks (mainly French and German) who bought Italian bonds got a great value back for their investments in the last 30 years. Easy money to the detriment of a corrupted society that has kept borrowing…perhaps dutifully…
What’s more, whatever is lent now, it’s only in their own interest as these money simply return to them immediately to pay back their interests (without interests, Italy’s taxation would cover all the State’s costs and this has been the case for decades)…one might wonder why such system is in place…it seems a form of exploitation, a different form of exploitation, but in the form of debt and interests…kept in place by corrupted (not necessarily in economic terms) or simply “selected” politicians.
The whole issue of creation of money (none seem to know much about it which is worrying in what is believed to be an educated part of the world) by central banks (now only the ECB) which lend freshly created money to private banks which lend them again to States (via bonds) seem a ridiculous process for me which simply makes the system worse and create constant inflation (which incidentally is another indirect tax, for those who believe the general population doesn’t pay enough of them).
There is something terribly wrong with it and it’s not a matter of Southern Europe, it’s more a matter of exploitation of an unfair financial system which does no good to people and is only favoring private banks and those who control them. (why on earth are some private institutions be given such power and why isn’t any politician addressing the problem? Perhaps these topics would be more important issues to discuss than Berlusconi)
The US debt and the US dollar are in a much more critical situation, but none ever wrote clearly that the dollar’s value is based on nothing. None has ever written much about the fact that in Italy there is instead a lot of “real” value because the country has one of the biggest gold reserve in the world (among the top for) as there was a “real” counter value in the Italian Central Bank for the previous currency, the Lira.
In the years 1979-ish the minister Draghi (now governor of the ECB) sold out IRI, a corporation of 1000 Italian companies to reduce the national debt (these figures are simply to give you an idea, check on wikipedia for the exact data/years). The companies were undervalued and the the situation has not changed a bit 30 years later. Now the same Mr. Draghi, wrote to the former prime minister, Mr Berlusconi to sell the gold reserves, but clearly under selling properties is not the smartest solution to reduce this phantasmal debt, which seems to me simply a way to take advantage of areas in the world from those who create those money in the first place. The same applies to currency values. None ever questions it… people just accept that bankers operate for the best interests of people around the world when it seems to me clear that it is not the case, but fair enough.
Well, now I am a bit tired to continue but I guess the whole point of this post is that perhaps people should start questioning a bit more what the media tell them to believe…and that, yes it would make more financial sense to privatize every service or to have nuclear plants and incinerators to deal with rubbish, despite the fact that they pollute the environment with particulate matters or radioactive waste (like they do in Norther Europe or in the much respected, bank secret driven Switzerland)… However, I’m glad that a in the Italian culture there are also more important values than just money.
I was lucky to be born in a country that provides a high standard of free public health-care and higher education and I am glad that in my province for example (Verona) they have been recycling door to door for the last 15+ years or that in Treviso, there is a company that recycles even the 20% of waste that would normally go to a landfill (they grind it and mix the compound with some other materials to create an alternative to hard plastic..).
Many Italians question the official powers because they are used to critical thinking and care about local, organic, quality food (slow food concept and the like).
Getting drunk is not a part of the culture and private debts is minimal compared to Norther European states. What’s more, until the previous generation, every social class could afford to buy a house, therefore there was a good minimum living standard (it seems to me) which has been lost now thanks to financial speculation and (perhaps only in minimal part) the friendly Northern Europeans, who on one hand despise certain cultures, but at the same time buy houses in these very foreign countries, altering their housing markets…there seem to be a double standard here, think about it.
Last but not least, in the last political elections in Italy, a citizens led movement, born online, received a third of the seats in both parliament houses. Whether one likes this movement or not, this is an incredible step forward towards a more direct form of modern democracy where normal citizens have been offered the chance to actively affect their national politics, without the filters of established political parties (which can be the source of modern corruption, as any established power).
What happened doesn’t really fit with the image of the country portrayed by the mass media in Italy and abroad, but then, are we going to deny that it really happened? Perhaps you should reconsider what you think of contemporary Italy and Italians and together with that, reconsider the value of modern mass media which seem to be instruments of propaganda instead of information.
I love all the wonderful, different European cultures, but lets tackle the real injustices (which are present everywhere) in our varied society, not what we are told to believe, in order to simply continue doing business as usual, whilst leading citizens against misconceptions of each other.
By the way, I am quite happy to learn from any culture I happen to live in.
Thank you,
Francesca
p.s. I’m not Italy’s ambassador, I don’t represent anyone else but myself, the majority of Italians eat nicer food than I do, dress definitely better and are much nicer people than me!! 🙂