5A WIKI||

A Reflection about our future

Based on Adam Smith’s principle of competition, Western Society has shown different industrial and economic scenarios in time.|| Taking into account Europe’s and Italy’s present condition, focus your attention on your future perspectives and express your personal opinion after considering L.Zingales’point of view External Link as reported by the journalist.

“Vent’anni fa – racconta – quando ci fu Mani Pulite avevo appena iniziato a insegnare negli Stati Uniti. Avevo voglia di tornare, ma alla fine, pensai che mi sarei giocato la carriera e non lo feci. Meglio per me, dico ora. Ma adesso, con la crisi, con il denaro non più disponibile in grandi quantità per sperperi e corruzione, può essere davvero arrivato il momento per un cambiamento radicale e dovete crederci. In passato, in Inghilterra e in America è successo, se si perde questa occasione in Italia, passeranno altri vent’anni prima che se ne presenti un’altra».(From L’utopia del merito. A lezionedi capitalismo ideale contro capitalismo reale in Ravenna & Dintorni, 21 - 09 – 2012)External Link

It is very difficult to be able to imagine what the Italian situation will be in the next 20 years, especially because nowadays Italy is in a deep and serious economic and social crisis. However the crisis may be a chance for a change; indeed there is no money for corruption and so Italy may revive, because the principle of competition stimulates merit and represents a going forth from the crisis according to the idea of Socialism. Zingales makes an implicit advice : it doesn’t matter what it might be like in 20 years, we live now, procrastination brings to tragic consequences and false and ridiculous justifications. The economist says that the reason why he emigrated in 1988 from taly to the US was because “he had had enough of living in a country where promotion was based on who you knew, not what you knew”; In Italy there wasn’t competition but only corruption and people were promoted on the basis of political links instead of ability. The statement reflects the situation of Italy and Europe, and their societies based on corruption, nepotism and personal profit. Italy is a nation in which slyness predominate and not honesty. To conserv their advantage position, people don’t care about the abilities but they consider who they can fake. So, as we can read within the second text considered, sometimes there could be secretaries which are better than managers but they aren’t considered because they are women. Besides, how people can have trust in their superiors and especially in the government? No one trusts his neighbor, public daily corruption is a shame and common people learn to betray, to cheat the others when the main thing is the personal interest. Words, words, words: politicians have promised to cut their wage but the only news has been the scandal in Latium. People’s money is exponentially wasted. Zingales believes and affirmes that the point from where everybody starts should be the same, for every person: so he opposed to recommendation and he is agree about meritocracy. Why there aren’t young new entries in politics? Because everybody is tightly tied to his seats and advantages. It is very important for him: in his life he thrived on this system of thought, indeed he found the US a country where there was a system of capitalism that was the pre-emienet exemplar of the free market ideal of economic liberty and open competition. Knowledge and ability should be more recompensed then loyalty towards to the boss. To exchange favors has a negative connotation, it represents something of illegal, with ulterior motives such as profit-making. UNSELFISHNESS (what a great word, even the sound conveys the idea of those poor selfish people’s dirty pettiness) is lost. To swap something for nothing: unreal. The economist gives us some possible solutions to this crisis: to create liberalization and privatization. The most important thing is that the economic culture of the state has to change. The problem is that we’ll never be able to make a change until we are slaves, slaves of our own society. Think about how many times, in the past four years, you’ve heard someone saying that Italy is going through a big economic crisis, everything is way too expensive, there is no money, there are no jobs but... the day after the Iphone5 arrived in Italy people were waiting out of the stores at midnight. This should make people think and ask themselves: “What is really our problem? Is it the economy? Or maybe we don’t know which are the important values anymore?” It is true, politicians don’t give us the best example by having parties and taking advantages from their previleged positions. However this doesn’t change the fact that we’ve lost the importance of some important values. If we cares about having the new Iphone5 (when we bought the “old” Iphone 4 less then a year ago) or having brand clothes we can’t talk about economic crisis, we can’t complain about low salary and high prices. Zingales might be right: we live in a corrupted country but we are the ones who are corrupted, slaves of our society and until we don’t change our minds we can’t change our nation.

The workshop “Manchester. A Case Study. Origins and Crisis of Capitalism” has been an occasion for us to think about our world. My attitude in life will try to avoid and destroy bad examples, and make emerge good ones. Indeed the only way seems a radical change: it can be interpreted as a drastic renewal in the ruling class or as a new beginning in a foreign country, as Luigi Zingales did. But this change must be made immediately! Otherwise the problem will not solve, rather it will get worse day by day. From another point of view you could also think that L. Zingales seems to invite you to change from your personal experience and activity. The Italian situation seems to worse everyday and it will burden on us. So Zingales invites Italian people to do something, to react. But there is a question : “What can we do?”. His advice is to try to do the best, being transparent should also be a really good start. We aren’t children. We must try to look at the world in a wider perspective and understand how reality works. We are almost adults and cannot go on embracing someone else’s ideas. Waiting for someone else to pave the way to us and solve our problems isn’t a resolution. “God has already went down once” as a flamboyant depressive Mrs. Winterson would say. We should take Zingales as a model and believe that everybody, in a small way, step by step, can contribute to a change. Being interested in current affairs, watching the news or panel discussions as well as reading newspapers could be the first thing to do. In a few words Change can come from everybody’s change. He seems to invite people not to pretend to be what they are not. To be true to themselves, that’s the question: how many people have still the courage to go against the tide, out of the teeming mass? How many people think we have reached the worst? How many are “selfish” and already involved ? Also, a different interpretation of the quotation can be that he is inviting the new generation to take part in politic to create a political climate with a different perspective. Young men should be involved in politic, they could embrace new ideas and values. They are the future and if they are interested in doing politic from now they can understand politicians’ mistakes and learn from them in order not to repeat them. Also because nowadays in politic we always have the same faces and the purpose of those people seems to be to “kill” each other, or rather one part wants to win on the other just to win and not to be good for people and for their country. In government the code of silence rules. Everybody is aware of their collective crime, and nobody wants to leave their advantaged condition. But how is it possible? For example, look at the event in Parma. The new mayor was considered too young and inexperienced to rule a city. Besides, Zingales doesn’t say he doesn’t believe in capitalism, in competition, the same competition of Adam Smith but he says that competition should be based on correctness and ethical principles. It seems as if it is a contradiction; nowadays everyone is interested only in himself. People want to increase only their richness. Just few of them think about the wealth of the nation. Even politician, they continue to impose taxation to common people but they don’t remove or decrease their advantage. They are not ready( they surely do not want) to sacrifice only few money from their “very low” salary to the well-being of the nation or only just to come out from crisis: they have to have their free personal car, eat crayfish at the price of a tomato pasta but... are they different from common people? Theoretically they only are elected as spokespersons of the people. The governing class wants to unliteracy the population, subjecting with own decisions; if that it isn’t sufficient, politicians enact particular and meaningless laws to city dweller (is this a democracy?!). Our silence nourish the corrupted blaze! Nowadays politic has no values but we do not make silence, we have to state our rights and try to improve the situation, for example electing a person, who is not interested in making money but only in making the right choices for the salvation of his people, according to the principle of justice. Again, who states what is against justice? Who is able to decide it. Who can decide it? Who governs. Our last Prime Minister Berlusconi has paved his way to avoid trials. He created an ineffective and proper justice system in which his actions were/are legal. When in Germany the only uncertainty of being involved in something illegal made a politician hand in his resignation, in Italy and in the whole world everybody knows “bunga-bunga” and Berlusconi was and is still deciding to present himself as a government candidate again or not. Great. On Friday morning we listened an “economic” lesson of Mrs Burba and I understand the politician’s decisions about Italian economy will not make better the situation. Indeed they established austerity politic for Italy. The decision burden on population because the taxes increase and on the opposite side wages decrease. The result is explainable with the economic theory called Keynesianism( from the surname of John Maynard Keynes,one of the best economist of XX century) that focused the attention of economy from production of goods to demand. According to the economist the fall of the demand has as a consequence the decreasing of production, and therefore of employment and last but not least, of well-being. The real problem is that money is on the hands of few people. Probably on the hands of the same people who take decisions about our economy. In addition to this Zingales suggests changes on the governing class and we have the task to choose very carefully its members. But if we don’t change, if we abide, the situation won’t get better.We all have to wake up, or “get born”, as Jeanette Winterson would say, avoiding maintaining an indifferent attitude towards politic and economy.I think we are grown up enough to do that. As a consequence,we must keep a critical opinion with reading newspaper articles and listening the news, otherwise we put our future on the others’ hands; how and why can we trust to someone whose we know nothing(?!). I think it would be more important a change of mentality rather than an economic change, because changes must also be maintained and, above all, must be rooted in the basic policy and not something only a facade. The main cause of the crisis is that the expenses of the state have been cut but the fees have been increased, so the only solution would be to reverse this process, but the politicians have no interest in doing this( guess why...), so our country is declining in peak. I believe everything which is happening right in recent years in Italy, it is the result of years and years of profligacy,carelessness and,also, corruption( think to early Nineties years’ Tangentopoli and “Mani Pulite” operation to discover and knock corruption down) . That’s why only a sensational event (in good or bad) will change the destiny of our country,but the decision of the outcome (beneficial or malignant) will be ours. There are many things that drive an economy, but one certainly is consumer confidence. If people have a belief in future success they will invest their time, energy and capital in ways that will restore the economy to a growth path. Confidence has been undermined in many ways over the last two decades. One of the greatest problems has been the lack of investment in manufacturing in this country. The result has been a loss of what the politicians term “good jobs”. Economy is people and if people don’t trust in a certain economic system, this will probably fall down. I believe that the last government actions of improving taxation is improductive because, nowadays wealth is in a stagnant condition. So the increasing tax burden provides only more evasion and corruption. In my opinion the progress starts from the everyone ‘s possibility to produce wealth by work.

The situation of economy in Italy and also in Europe is very critic. The crisis which started in 2008 is still present and has its bad effects on society still nowadays. Moreover, the political situation in Italy is chaotic and people don’t even know who they have to vote in the next elections because every party, every politician seems to be a charlatan and a thief...and often is. Unfortunately we have to remark that this condition has always existed in Italy, since the foundation of our nation, and still goes on. Corruption and waste of public money are the news we read or hear every day and which make people furious. In fact, people have less money and more and more people are becoming poorer and this huge waste or money is felt like a great injustice, which really is. The famous economist Luigi Zingales moved to the States to work because he wanted to escape from Italy, a land of corruption and waste and today he doesn’t regret his choice: Italy is becoming a sort of hell and people can’t stand it any longer. But the economist suggests some important actions government should take to improve the situation. The first step, according to him, is the setting of a meritocratic state, in which people who want to work for the good of the country and come out of the tunnel of the crisis have to hold the reins and support a more competitive market. Nowadays, in fact, big business companies have been helped too much by the state and have gained too much power so that they act only for their interests. Zingales advises that smaller companies should direct the market thanks to competition. A genuine competition among companies will bring to a meritocratic state and to a greater wellness for the country. In a country such as Italy, in which people have success only because of money, image or because they have friends in high places, I agree with the economist that a meritocratic state is the best solution to our economic and political crisis. Not big companies, which make the interests of few people, should run the market and the country, but common citizens and smaller companies who will act for a better place to live in.