Something Terrible Is Happening in Italy

Italy is in trouble... but this doesn't seem to be a new thing. With mountainous protection from the north and great trade connections through the Mediterranean sea, Italy has been in an ideal geographic position that has benefitted the country economically for millennia. After a decade of stagnation, can Italy boom like it has in the past, or is this time different?

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[kiraleskirales]

I am from Italy, now living in continental Europe. My experience is that prices are comparable, salaries are at least twice as high where I live. Most of my contacts still there barely survive with what they get from a full time job. Here, you can have opportunities as a young person. Responsibilities, consideration. In Italy, young people are exploited and feared. The old guard won't let you innovate, make mistakes, learn. They won't be challenged. If the population is old, Italian voters are even older. From politics to economics, from industries to families, all the power in society is in the hands of previous generations who don't really care about a future they will not see. I went away from Italy because there is no intention of building a better future for the country, no long term investment, no hope. Everyone just takes what they can before the whole country collapses.

[SpaceChimes]

I’m young and moved to Italy in a skilled worker program (rientri di cervelli) just to find out that I couldn’t find a place more youth-unfriendly possible. It is like the country holds pride in stopping in time. I had to send a written letter by mail to cancel my internet service. This is the level of bureaucracy they hold for everything.

[tattianasalles]

There is an Italian economist called Lorenzo Codogno who wrote a book about Italy's Economic Decline in the past 30 years.
According Codogno research the decline of italian economy is related to the lack of meritocracy. Connections, rather than merit, are a long-standing feature of italian economy. This became a significant problem when Italy's economy could no longer grow due to imitation, devaluation, and public debt, and faced the challenges of becoming a frontier knowledge-based open economy, like Germany, Sweden, Netherlands and other European nations.
I am from Brazil and everything I read about italian economic issues remember me our neighbors in Argentina. Brazil was never a developed country, but Argentina was once a very rich country which went into a slow and deep decline for reasons similar to the Italian ones.

[matteougolini-osux]

As an italian let me say thank you for this video.
You reported properly the actual situation in the country.
After graduated in college, many friends of mine and me moved to other european countries to have the chance to have a good life.
Personally i tried to work in Milan but unfortunatelly the cost of living is too high compared to the wages.
So, after six months i packed and moved to Ireland.
I Hope so much the economy will recover in the next years but the low fertility rate and low productivity are not a good sign for the future

[me]

I lived in Germany for a year. So many of the friends I made were Italian. I heard on and on about how they make more money, are treated better, and are generally happier in Germany than in Italy, bureaucracy aside. One of my closer friends told me how she never wants to go back because there is nothing left for her in Italy. If that's not heartbreaking, I don't know what is.

[robertsossi]

Having tried living and working in Italy during the 80s I encountered many stonewalls that prevented my upwards professional ambition. Primarily, Italy is not a meritocracy. Nepotism rules. Even to be considered for a mundane job like service station attendant or Night Porter you had to be well connected. Once in employment, pay rates as well as pay dates were "flexible". Companies adhere solidly to a hierarchical culture. One cannot question or cast doubt as to a senior colleague's decision or action. Showing initiative is deemed dangerous by your colleagues and immediate superiors. So it's little wonder that young graduates opt to move to another country or seek a cushy position in state employment. The state bureaucracy is to put it mildly, glacial.

[StefanoBorini]

As an Italian who has left for a foreign country, the reason why I left is way more fundamental than cost of living, salary, and work quality. It's because the whole country, from its government to the public administration to the citizens, humiliated and keeps humiliating me and many other people like me. They humiliate our skills, our willingness to be entrepreneurial, and our desire to push forward. There's only so much humiliation you can take before you tell them to get lost and drown in their obsession for mediocrity and control, as you jump on a plane and never turn back.

[angelomariano]

IT'S NOT THE TAXES, BUT THE PEOPLE.
As an Italian, who just spent one year in JAPAN, when I compare ROME to TOKYO, I see for the latter: clean streets, great pride in doing any kind of work, respect for other people properties, courtesy in offices and stores, etc.

[eddy]

Some of us (Italians) don't even understand our internal problems, but you did a great job from a macro prespective. It's worth subscribing to your Channel.

[MaggieDiMenna]

I‘m currently in my last year of university here in Milan, and I think the fact that Italy continues to lose its graduates is a big issue but I don’t see it getting fixed anytime soon. For example, my boyfriend studied as a programming engineer but did not end up taking a job in Milan because the pay is so low, he wouldn’t even be able to pay the monthly rent on a one bedroom apartment in Milan, however in Switzerland (Ticino) he makes 4x more than he would have in Milan and his rent is actually LESS than a similar apartment in Milan. Now that I’m looking for internships, I’m looking more towards Switzerland as well since in Italy most internships are not paid while in Switzerland they are.

[LorenzoRace]

I'm Italian and regarding technological backwardness, I can tell you that at the University of Milan (one of the largest and most famous in Italy), researchers work with machines operating on Windows 95 (I swear). Not to mention the public administration, where employees don't even know how to move a file to the trash or create new folders.

[cesq]

As an Italian, this video is insanely accurate and the curious thing is that almost none of us can see the situation as clear as you did. Common mindset here is "everything sucks, take what you can in any way" or leave.
And I relate with all the comments around here

[lookouthill]

A cousin married an Italian woman and after speaking to her about work my mind was blown. She worked for her aunt, an office job, and hadn’t been paid for more than a year but said she could never speak to her aunt or anyone else at work about it. She lived with her parents so contributing to rent wasn’t expected. It blew my mind! She was just hoping one day soon they’ll start paying again.

[vladislavvelizanin]

Sounds a lot like Spain to me as well. A very developed economy with a high quality of living, but few possibilities for young people to work their way up to the top. Being a kid with well-to do parents, financially secure in their 40s-50s and with a plot of ancestral land, must be wonderful in either of this. Being old and retired in your villa is just the best experience in the world. Being a young parent without any property, looking to start your career, is literally almost impossible and definitely not worth it. That's why the birth rates are low and the young people are moving elsewhere.

[conversiamo]

I'm an Italian living abroad. I moved over 20 years ago. I work remotely and go back to my country quite often. There is a lot of wealth that escapes taxation and plenty of wealthy people who pay zero taxes. The amount of nice cars, houses, well dressed people and time spent on holiday and travelling by my compatriots tells a different story. It's true though that life is expensive and lots of young people find it impossible to move up the rankings of a small corporate structure, well described in this video. In bocca al lupo a tutti.

[BG-ejfy]

I recently visited Italy and I had the best time of my life. Such a beautiful country with great food and great people. I hope it turns it around economically

[alessandrocerioli]

As many other members have pointed out as a matter of fact Italy stopped growing AFTER they abandoned the automatic wage actualisation in the 80s, today Italian companies expect new graduates to work FOR FREE so the spiral is indeed real but it works exactly in the opposite way this video tries to prove. No actualisation-> poorer workers-> employers want to pay new generations less-> consumes tumble-> people cannot afford to have children-> geriatric society-> the few young people are paid even less-> no children at all. This is how a country dies.

[coconuts]

Just an example of the "advanced economy" in Italy. To get my parking place in an underground city parking lot next to my home I had to personally visit four different city offices, bringing photocopies of all my documents, and filling up manually paper forms. In other european countries you do all of this online with one click. The Italian City Hall does not even have a list of residents - you must bring them a photocopy of your Id card which THEY themselves issued. They are beyond hopeless.

[JuanSanchez-rbqu]

You forgot a KEY factor here which is Italy's really high tax rate compared to other countries even in the eurozone. This is why there's so much tax evasion, its not just culture but the fact that which such high taxes you can't even break even let alone make a profit. This is what Laffer's curve is all about, if taxes are too high people stop paying them, its that simple.

[brunacardoso]

thank u for speaking out about this. I'm a teenager from Italy and here there's nothing for me, especially with the new government (Meloni) who took away even the few economic bonuses we used to buy school supplies. I already decided that as soon as I finish school I AM MOVING. It's hard to survive with a full time job as a young adult, they don't take us seriously cause their mentality it's still 80's-like, when your parents could afford to help you out if they wanted to. The school system it's even worse. Last week a 14 year old threw himself out the school's window because of the stress he was feeling. I personally study every day at least 6-7 hours a day (after school hours) and still get called a failure by my teacher's who are absolutely terrible (professionally). It's all going downhill and sadly I think my beloved country is never recovering.