Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: [OT] Addio, Dolce Vita...

Secondo THE ECONOMIST (nov 2004, ma lo predissero nel 2001), l'Italia
farà la fine dell'antica Repubblica di Venezia....
http://www.economist.com/surveys/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5164061
:'-(

From The Economist print edition
**********************************
For all its attractions, Italy is caught in a long, slow decline.
Reversing it will take more courage than its present political leaders
seem able to muster, says John Peet (interviewed here)
* * *
AT FIRST blush, life in Italy still seems sweet enough. The countryside
is stunning, the historic cities beautiful, the cultural treasures
amazing, and the food and wine more wonderful than ever. By most
standards, Italians are wealthy, they live for a long time and their
families stick impressively together. The boorish drunkenness that
makes town centres in many other countries unpleasant is mercifully
rare in Italy. The traffic may be bad, and places such as Venice and
Florence are overrun by tourists, but if you go off-season-or merely
off the beaten track-you can have a more enjoyable time in Italy than
practically anywhere else.
Yet beneath this sweet surface, many things seem to have turned sour.
The economic miracle after the second world war, culminating in the
famous 1987 sorpasso (when Italy officially announced that its GDP had
overtaken Britain's), is well and truly over. Italy's average economic
growth over the past 15 years has been the slowest in the European
Union, lagging behind even France's and Germany's. Its economy is now
only about 80% the size of Britain's. Earlier this year Italy briefly
tipped into recession; for 2005 as a whole, its economy is likely to be
the only one in the EU to shrink. Growth next year is expected to be
anaemic at best.
Italian companies, especially the small, family-owned firms that have
been the backbone of the economy, are under ever-increasing pressure.
Costs have risen, but productivity has remained flat or even declined.
Membership of the euro, Europe's single currency, now rules out
devaluation, which for many years acted as a safety-valve for Italian
business. Italy's competitiveness is deteriorating fast, and its shares
of world exports and foreign direct investment are very low. The World
Economic Forum in its annual competitiveness league table recently
ranked the country a humiliating 47th, just above Botswana. The economy
has also proved highly vulnerable to Asian competition, because so many
small Italian firms specialise in such areas as textiles, shoes,
furniture and white goods, which are taking the brunt of China's export
assault.
******Down at heel*******
The effects of decline are starting to show. Increasing numbers of
Italians are finding their living standards stagnating or even falling.
The cost of living is widely believed to have risen sharply since euro
notes and coins replaced lire in January 2002. Property prices have
certainly shot out of reach for many first-time buyers in Rome, Milan
and even Naples. Many Italians are cutting back on their annual
holidays, or even going without. Others are putting off buying new cars
or even new suits, a real deprivation for such design-conscious people.
Supermarkets report that spending now falls in the fourth week of every
month before the next pay cheque arrives, a sure sign that families are
struggling to make ends meet.
A lacklustre economy is causing broader problems too. Italy's
infrastructure is creaking: roads, railways and airports are falling
below the standards of the rest of Europe, and public and private
buildings are looking ever shabbier. Educational standards have
slipped: the country comes out badly in the OECD's PISA cross-national
comparisons, and no Italian university now makes it into the world's
top 90. Spending on research and development is low by international
standards.
Italy has also suffered more than its fair share of corporate scandals,
notably the bond default by Cirio and the collapse of Parmalat. And the
public finances are in a shambles. Respectable estimates put the
underlying budget deficit for next year, ignoring one-off measures, at
5% of GDP, way above the 3% ceiling set by the euro area's stability
and growth pact. The public debt stands at over 120% of GDP and is no
longer falling.
Even Italy's social fabric is coming under strain. The family remains
strong and divorce rates are relatively low. But the fact that 40% of
Italians aged 30-34 are reportedly living with their parents is not
just a happy sign of family harmony or attachment to mamma's cooking.
Many young Italians stay at home because they cannot find work or
because they do not earn enough to afford a place of their own.
Social trust, a concept that is admittedly hard to measure, seems
unusually low in Italy-one reason, perhaps, why family firms have
always played such a big part in the economy. And respect for the
rules, and even the law, never high, appears to have fallen further in
recent years. Both tax evasion and illegal building, encouraged by
repeated amnesties, seem to be on the rise. Organised crime and
corruption remain entrenched, especially in the south.
To cap it all, Italy's demographics look terrible. The country has one
of the lowest birth rates in western Europe, at an average of 1.3
children per woman, and the population is now shrinking; yet Italians
are living ever longer, so it is also ageing rapidly. The economic
consequences -too many pensioners, not enough workers to maintain
them- are worrying enough on their own. What makes them worse is
Italians' low rate of participation in work. Only 57% of those in the
15-64 age range are in employment, the smallest proportion in western
Europe. Germany, by comparison, has an employment rate of 66%, and
Britain one of 73%. Although overall unemployment in Italy is not too
bad by west European standards, it is disturbingly high among the young
and in the south.
********Berlusconi's legacy**********
What has gone wrong with the Italian economy, and how can it be put
right? These are the main questions this survey will seek to answer.
But it will do so in the context of Italy's unruly political scene.
Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government, elected in May 2001, seems
likely to manage the rare feat of staying in office for a full term
(ending next spring) - a first for a post-war government in Italy. Mr
Berlusconi is immensely proud of this. But he has much less to be proud
of when it comes to the economy. In his 2001 election campaign, he
promised to apply the business acumen that had helped him to become
Italy's richest man to make all Italians richer. This he has
conspicuously failed to do.
The Economist's view of Mr Berlusconi is well known. We declared in
April 2001 that he was unfit to lead Italy, because of the morass of
legal cases brought against him at various stages of his business
career and because of the conflicts of interest inherent in his
ownership of Italy's three main private television channels. Almost
five years on, he still faces legal problems (of which more later), and
he has done little to resolve his conflicts of interest: indeed,
because the government owns RAI, the state broadcaster, Mr Berlusconi
now controls or influences some 90% of Italian terrestrial television
(which does not stop him complaining about his critics on TV). Our
verdict of April 2001 stands.
Yet, as we acknowledged at the time, in 2001 there was nevertheless a
case to be made for electing Mr Berlusconi's centre-right coalition.
Italy badly needed a dose of pro-market reforms, liberalisation,
privatisation, deregulation and a shake-up of the public
administration, all of which Mr Berlusconi had promised. He even
pledged to cut taxes. A majority of Italian voters, backed by much of
Italian business, were willing to overlook both his legal entanglements
and his conflicts of interest and give him a chance to reform the
country. But as the next election approaches, very little of what he
promised has been delivered, so many of his erstwhile supporters are
feeling disillusioned.
Even the apparent political stability that Mr Berlusconi has fostered
is deceptive. His six-party centre-right coalition has come close to
collapse more than once, usually thanks to squabbling between Umberto
Bossi's Northern League and Gianfranco Fini's National Alliance. Last
April a row with a smaller ally, the Union of Centre and Christian
Democrats, forced Mr Berlusconi to resign and form a new government.
On current form the centre-left opposition under Romano Prodi looks the
likeliest victor in the election planned for April 9th 2006. But even
if he manages to win, Mr Prodi will find it hard to introduce reforms
-not least because his coalition embraces no fewer than nine parties,
several of which will obstruct change. It was an ally of Mr Prodi's,
Fausto Bertinotti, and his unreconstructed Communists that pushed him
out of office in 1998. In truth, neither of the two main groupings in
Italian politics offers much hope to those who believe that the country
needs radical (and painful) reform.
Yet Italy is approaching a crunch. Rather like Venice in the 18th
century, it has coasted for too long on the back of its past success.
Again like Venice, it has lost many of the economic advantages which
underpinned that success. For Venice, it was a near-monopoly on trade
with the East that paid for the creation of its beautiful palaces and
churches; today's Italy has benefited hugely from a combination of
low-cost labour and a switch of workers away from low-productivity
farming (and the south) into manufacturing (mostly in the north). But
such good things invariably come to an end.
That is what happened to La Serenissima at the end of the 18th century.
Venice was contemptuously swept away by Napoleon, and the last doge
voted himself out of office. The serene republic is now little more
than a tourist attraction, however beguiling. Could this become the
fate of Italy as a whole?
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 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:1143051538.3...@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Secondo THE ECONOMIST (nov 2004, ma lo predissero nel 2001), l'Italia
farà la fine dell'antica Repubblica di Venezia....
http://www.economist.com/surveys/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5164061
l'economist ha sempre, da sempre sparato nel c**o all'Italia. Destra o 
sinistra, sta cominciando a non essere credibile, da questo punto di 
vista...