Tag: Italy

Digitale Terricolo

(English follows)Ho deciso di iniziare una nuova sezione del blog dove commentare quello che succede in Italia. Pensavo di non scrivere in inglese per due motivi – il primo è che malgrado la mia “fluenza” in inglese riesco comunque a scrivere più velocemente e meglio in italiano; il secondo è che difficilmente quello che scrivo può interessare a qualcuno che non parli italiano. Naturalmente se ci fosse qualche anglofono all’ascolto interessato ai miei deliri sarò felice di aggiungere le traduzioni “on demand”.

Fine dell’introduzione. Spinto dal martellare incessante delle ultime settimana sulla necessità di approvvigionarsi di un decoder per il digitale terrestre (o DVB-T per gli addetti ai lavori) volevo scrivere qualche riflessione in merito.
Sul DVB-T e sulla sua utilità sono già stati spesi fiumi di inchiostro, distrutte foreste e riciclati gazillioni di pixel. In sintesi sono d’accordo: che tutti i soldi bruciati in questa operazione potevano essere più proficuamente investiti per ridurre il digital divide (ma forse era comunque necessario adeguare la tecnologia TV in Italia al resto del mondo); che sicuramente il DVB-T non è la tecnologia del futuro (ma posto il futuro abbastanza in là nel tempo, nessuna tecnologia odierna lo è); che col fischio che non si devono fare lavori all’antenna ecc. ecc.
Sicuramente ci sono almeno due fattori positivi: 1) adesso (dopo che è passato l’antennista) riesco a vedere sul mio anzianotto TV (analogico doc) circa 140 canali di cui più o meno la metà in chiaro e 2) dal 18/5/2010 l’informazione TV è migliorata dal momento che il TG4 è sparito dalla sintonia analogica.
Ma parliamo dei contributi. Non quelli passati (ormai sono andati) che hanno avuto come effetto principale quello di tenere alti i prezzi dei decoder, ma l’ultimo, quello attualmente in vigore. La normativa recita che tutte le persone di 65 anni o più, (a) in regola con il pagamento del canone RAI e che (b) abbiano dichiarato meno di 10k€ nel 2009 hanno diritto a un buono di 50€.
Senza voler istigare nessuno alla diserzione del canone, penso che se qualcuno rientra nella categoria (b) abbia spese molto più urgenti e vitali che non quella per rientrare nella categoria (a).
Non solo, ma il contributo è valido solo per il decoder interattivo (MHP che è più costoso del decoder semplice (circa un 4x sui prezzi minimi: 80€ contro 20€) con 400€ di soldi gabellati ai contribuenti si potevano aiutare 20 famiglie anzichè 5. Che poi a ben vedere non le aiuti nemmeno tanto, visto che il contributo è di 50€ e che per arrivare a 80€ ne devi spendere ancora 30€ che più di quanto costa un decoder semplice.
Aggiungo anche che il decoder interattivo ha senso solo se lo colleghi al telefono per partecipare alle trasmissioni interattive e quindi sono potenzialmente altri soldi da spedere per chi probabilmente (visto (b)) non arriva a fine mese con le spese essenziali.
C’è da chiedersi se bisogna ricorrere, ancora una volta, al rasoio di Hanlon oppure se questi incentivi sono fatti per favorire qualcuno in particolare.
Ora se solo trovassi una guida tv semplice per stabilire quale dei 70+ canali posso guardare senza passare un’ora a fare zapping….

(English)
I decided to start a new blog section where I am going to comment what is currently happening in Italy. My intention is to write in Italian (and not in English) for two reasons – first, despite my “fluent” English, I am faster and better at writing in Italian; next it is unlikely that what I’ll write here could be of any interest for those who can’t read Italian. Should this not be the case and one or more English speaking people be interested in my rants, I’ll be happy to add translations “on demand”.

Madness concept considered harmful

I read too much sci-fi to not be concerned about the recent claims I read about in the press. I found that “madness” boundaries are quite fuzzy, just have a look at the definition of Insanity on Wikipedia. Being a danger for himself and the people in general by flouting societal norms is quite vague, and you can stretch it to fit a number of behaviors that ranges from criminal to acceptable though odd or unusual.On the thin ice of the latter side, the “mental insane” label could be applied on who is just different from you, who do not fully conforms to the canon. And here we go on the even thinner ice of who decides which the canon is.
That why a political agenda that contains the “more mental sanity checks for these people or those” sounds creepy to me.
Given the backlog of the politician shouting these claims, who this man would consider mental among judges and magistrates? Those investigating on his business?
You may well consider both refusing being corrupted and investigating on one of the most powerful men (if not the most powerful) in Italy something that flouts our pitiful societal canons.

Are we sure we have to be in UE?

According to this research, Italy is quite prone to corruption, scoring well below all western countries. This is something that we cannot blame our politicians for. Corruption is endemic, it involves two parties – the corrupted and the corrupter. It cannot happen just because of politicians. It is a consensus. It has to do with habits and connivance. Is it possible and how long would it take for Italy to gain a corruption-free status like the rest of Europe?

One more rant

Oh, I forgot yesterday, maybe it wasn’t yet clear in my mind and I needed some more dig and headscraping on laws and funds to have it more vivid. Our government is trying to protect Italians from harming themselves by not subscribing an integrative pension fund. This is for sure a laudable intention – I warn you, if you want to survive the 3rd age, you have to put aside some money.
The problem is that this strongly contrast with the current fund schemes that offer several lines of investment with different aggressiveness and features. In other words the money that the government forces you to put aside to grant a wealthy old age are allowed to go into the slot machine of the financial trades and you could end with empty hands even emptier than if you had put money in the mattress. The law requires only the most conservative line to grant the sum you put into (that is 0% interest, you are nonetheless wasting money in taxes and losing power of purchasing because of the inflation). The law set the TFR interest rate as a goal, not as a requirement for the most conservative line. Nothing happens if the goal is not reached.
Even worse the law allows to chose more aggressive investment that could bring higher positive rates or dragging you into losing money, maybe helping fund managers interests but going against the noble goal to avoid social problems when the current working class will reach the retirement age.
There is an underlying problem of trust, lacking of trust. If the government wants Italians to trust this new pension form, then the new form must grant everything the old one granted. The law must grant at least the same rate and at least the chance to get all the money at retirement.
After all if everyone is so staunch about the TFR performing worse than the financial fund why don’t they grant the fund to perform at least as bad as the TFR?

A Bleak Future?

What awaits for us in the midst of the future? How current choices are going to impact on our future existance? Public pensions has been for a long time now a solid foundation for Italian families. Pensions allowed parents to keep their sons and daughter with them, helping them to have a roof and warm meals while occasionally earning 1000€ per month. Basically elderly pensions balanced precarious and occasional work, unemployment and dramatically high house prices.
There’s no way for a young couple to start a life together in any of the Northern Italy cities with such poor wages, with the ghost of sudden unemployment and such high apartment rents, not to talk about buying one.
(Well not that a young couple could start a life together if they live with their parents, neither… that could be part of the reasons for Italy has such a low natality rate).
Unfortunately the Italian pension system is lame.
Rather than implementing a system where everyone put aside a bit of money that are wisely invested and then given back as a life annuity after worker retirement, politicians and unions decided a long ago an inter-generation agreement. Under this agreement the current generation of workers pays the pensions of the current generation of retired. Brilliant? Maybe until the money set aside for pensions of the current work class is enough to pay for the current pension expense.
What is going wrong is that Italians make less and less babies and tend to survive (despite of the public health care) longer. So the agreement between generations is broken, the promise that we workers are going to receive the same treatment we are providing to our elders is void.
According to current law, when the time will come to retire I’ll have an annuity of about 40% of the average salary of the past 5 years. Not enough to survive unless I’m starting a extra bright career right now.
Although this trend is clear from about 15 years ago, only now drastic decisions have been taken. Workers money (the so called TFR a form a delayed salary awarded when leaving the job) have been confiscated leaving little or no choice to the former owners. Well, it isn’t completely true, you can leave everything as is, but you are on the verge of a cliff. The idea is to force most of the workers to move that money into complementary contributive pension funds. And when in a fund this money is no longer completely yours. You cannot move in another kind of investment or get them back to the former delayed salary form. Moreover you get no real warranty. If you chose for a conservative fund line you are granted that you will have back your money, no interest. Given the current inflation levels, that means that you could lose 2.5% of purchasing value of your money per year. The delayed salary is bound by law to produce an interest of 1,5% + 0,75 * inflation.
All this funds are privately held and what you get is an eased fiscal drag on the earnings, a bit more convenient than the TFR (19% against 23%).
The worst nightmare is not only having a ludicrous public pension, but losing every bit of the TFR money thanks to financial market volatility and irresponsible fund choices.
We have time up to the end of the month to decide what to do with our money, what is sure is that there will be lot of problems (the social kind) when the time will come for us to retire – precarious workers won’t have any pension at all, excessively conservative people won’t do any complementary form and will have just the TFR to add to the 40% of the last salaries, a number of funds will have problems (Cirio, Parmalat, Enron and 09/11 don’t ring any bell?) returning little or no money.
But there is a loop, the only way to provide a better future is to increase current wages so that everyone could save for retirement to achieve at least a decent life. Traditional manufacturing is in a difficult position with emerging country economies that allow for extremely low work costs. We have to do like the rest of Europe and follow the advanced services and technologies direction, we have to focus on industries where the cost of work is negligible respect to the cost of delivered good or service. And to do this we need both public investments in Research, in Universities, we need easier way to start business activities and to attract foreign investments in the advanced industries.
Are we hopeless?

Elianto

I should be wiser. Having a reading queue the length of a mid-sized transatlantic and being easily captured by a book, I should avoid bookstores like hell. This time I am delighted not to be so wise because otherwise I wouldn’t have stumbled in Elianto by Stefano Benni and I would have lost this good reading for God knows how much time yet. Usually, a book hooks me through the back cover lines (or the inside cover leaflet in case of a hardback). This time I opened the book and found a strange, hand-drawn map covering two pages. Wow seems something like “Lord of the Rings”! Then I turned to the back cover but I was already hooked and I already knew in my heart that soon some money would have left my wallet.

Benni always satisfied my reading taste and this time was even better. The story of Elianto is so poetic, evocative, and dramatic that the fact that is so well told is just its natural consequence.

The story takes place in a country named Tristalia (in English could sound like “Sadtaly”). The country is run by a computer and every year twenty presidential candidates challenge themselves in a sort of living (well ‘deadly’ could be more appropriate) reality show, the one who survives wins and can rule the country for a year.

Every few years sorts of tournament games are held to recognize the autonomy of counties. These games (as with everything else) are cheated to create the best outcomes for better ruling the country.

Moreover every day every family is called to vote in the daily poll. If they guess the majority of the answers they get electricity, water, TV, and warming, otherwise they are excluded for the day from the usual supply.

This is not so different from the background of other books by the same writer, where the Italian sociopolitical situation is exaggerated and distorted with a humorous, but chilling effect.

Elianto is a young teenager badly ill. He is in a hospital for terminal diseases. He is the only boy who has defeated the pluri-awarded Baby Esatto the current government champion for the next autonomy games.

Elianto is dying, but his friends want to save him. So wants the Devil, yes the Evil One (but no more evil than the worst human), because doing evilness in Tristalia is so widespread that there is no longer an intriguing challenge to tempt humans from that country.

A great warrior is sent after another yet greater warrior to defeat the government champion of Evil Fight, Rollo Napalm.

Elianto’s friends, three devils, and the cloud warrior Fuku with two bonsai-sized yogis will go, every group its way, searching for what they consider the remedy. Meanwhile, Elianto will be endangered by one of the doctors who run the hospital under Baby Esatto’s influence.

There are many strong points in the book: there are many unforgettable characters so well defined into their roles. Hard to read the death personification (a Flamenco dancer) without feeling anything. The background is satiric and frightening. The idea of parallel universes is not new per se, but it is approached freshly. A map is needed to travel from one universe to another. This map is either cast by a full moon through an old tree onto a wall in Elianto’s room or found on the back of an eel can (and the eel inside is not only alive but forecasts the future). Or it is found on a micro piece of paper obtained by processing a single grain of rice. Or it can be found tattooed on the butt of a devil.
Well, until now, if you have to read just one book by Benni, read this. If in doubt with another writer, read this. Highly recommended.