Re:Italy’s teetering banks will be Europe’s next crisis
by danmaz74 on Monday July 11, 2016 @07:21AM
(#12070288)
The big, big, big problem in Italy are pensions. Pension contributions eat 33.4%, before taxes, and this make our companies uncompetitive and lots of the best workers leave. Devaluation would allow to deflate pensions, and make our labor more competitive. Not without lots of other problems, but right now there is practically nothing we can do.
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Re:Italy’s teetering banks will be Europe’s next crisis
by davidw on Monday July 11, 2016 @11:49AM
(#12071861)
That points to an underlying political problem: the government is unable to deal with pensions directly, and can only cut them by the somewhat underhanded means of inflating/devaluating them away.
There's no political will or consensus to change some of what's wrong in Italy. To be fair, though, it's not easy anywhere, but Italy seems particularly stuck.
Re:Italy’s teetering banks will be Europe’s next crisis
by danmaz74 on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @02:22AM
(#12077097)
I see your point David, but directly cutting pensions (not just the rich pensions, which outrage so many people but in aggregate are little more than a drop in the ocean) is something that would be political suicide for anybody, and I guess not just in Italy.