Italy is the most corrupt country in Western Europe, and one with slower growth. A UN study links the two phenomena by invoking illiteracy functional. 1. According to the report of Transparency International of 2008, Italy is considered by experts as the most corrupt country in Western Europe. In the ranking of the best performing countries (in yellow and orange in the figure below), it only occupies the 55th place, while the seventh economy in the world is preceded by almost all OECD countries and also from other poor countries as Chile (23), Uruguay (23), Botswana (36), Bhutan (45) and Malaysia (47).
On the other hand, data from the International Monetary Fund (2008) show that Italy is also, with the exception of Ireland, the country with the weakest economic growth in Western Europe, the only one who ended the year with a negative -0.1% . In addition, the report OECD in Figures (2008), the average Italian growth (+1.7%) in the last twenty years (1987-2007) was the lowest of OECD countries. According
Daniel Haile (2005) 's UNU-WIDER , can be explained by a mathematical model such as the high rate of corruption contributes to slow economic growth.
2. The premise of Haile that corruption in a country (in blue in the figures below) tends to be:
- inversely proportional to the redistribution of the wealth tax (in red on the left)
- inversely proportional to education of the population (in yellow on the right)
- directly proportional to income inequality (on the left in yellow, red, right).
Haile The conclusion is that (a) corruption practiced by the wealthy classes on the political class, to consolidate (b) inequality of income, leads (c) the State to reduce the redistribution of wealth through taxes, dropping to below optimal levels for growth. This reduction limits (d) the resources that the state can invest in public education, lowering (and) the level of literacy in the population. Thing that hinders (f) the dissemination of technological innovation, thus depriving (g) the economy of one of the main drivers of growth.
3. The data seem to fit the Italian situation point by point to this model.
(a) First, the size of the corruption problem is exemplified by the relationship SOS Impresa - Confesercenti (2007), that the Mafia is the first "company" Italian, with € 130 billion in annual revenue. For guidance, the Group Fiat first Italian industrial company, invoice € 58.9 billion, the Unicredit Group third European banking group, invoice € 77 billion, and will invoice Fininvest Group 6.1. At international level, General Motors says $ 207.3 billion a year (162 billion €), the IBM group $ 91.4 billion (71.4 billion €) and finally Google $ 10.6 billion (7.8 billion €). In practice, therefore, the Mafia is among the few "companies" that Italian, for overall budgets, are not afraid of globalization. Moreover, as has very large profits (90 billion €) and the banking system is in a liquidity crisis, This financial burden can only be converted into a broad power to influence the political system, Italy.
(b) Secondly, Italy is the 6th OECD country with the highest rate of social inequality, the report Growing Unequal (2008) OECD itself (figure below). The average income of the richest 10% of the population is about 10.6 times that of the poorest 10%, a factor well above average (8.9 times), which in Europe is second only to those of Portugal and Poland . Countries like the United Kingdom, Spain and Greece is around the average, while in France and the Scandinavian countries higher incomes are just 5 o 6 volte superiori a quelli più bassi.
(c) In terzo luogo, anche se è vero che la pressione fiscale in Italia è abbastanza alta (43,3% del PIL nel 2007, 6° Paese dell’ OCSE ), tuttavia la sua funzione redistributiva è decurtata da una forte tendenza all’evasione fiscale, che avvantaggia soprattutto i ceti medio-alti. In teoria, lo Stato impone una tassazione progressiva, che dovrebbe riequilibrare le diseguaglianze sociali, prelevando più dai ricchi che dai poveri. In pratica, obbliga a pagare solo i poveri e tollera che i ricchi evadano le tasse. Secondo la Direzione del Dipartimento delle Finanze , l’evasione in 2006 amounted to 200 billion € per year, equivalent to 13.7% of GDP. By way of illustration, the entire U.S. economy recovery plan launched by Obama on Feb. 16 last amounted to little more than three times that figure ($ 787 billion, 655 billion €).
(d) These resources removed from public finance is reflected in spending cuts, and primarily to the historically neglected area of \u200b\u200beducation and research. The entire cost to the state sector in 2005, € 67.9 billion, one-third of tax evasion. Reform Gelmini has scaled to save about € 7.8 billion: 3.9% evasion. But these cuts affect a spending are traditionally under-sized. According to the OECD report Education at a Glance (2008), Italy's spending on education at all levels, if measured as a percentage of GDP (4.4%) is considerably lower than the average (5.4% ) and only higher than those of the Czech Republic (4.3%), Spain (4.2%), Greece (4.0%) and Slovakia (3.9%). If, however, is calculated as a percentage of total public expenditure (9.3%), then, in addition to being below average (13.2%), is also the lowest ever recorded (chart below: The blue columns indicate the values 2005, the blue dots as of 2000).
(e) The small size of the investment can only result in modest results. Also according to the OECD, the total Italian population between 25 and 64 years, 16% had primary school or less, 33% middle school, 38% have a diploma and 13% have a degree or more. Half of the Italian population is stationary then the school (49%), compared with an OECD average of one third of the population (31%). Only four countries have a lower proportion of our graduates (51%). If we look for graduates (13%), only Turkey (10%) there taking the leading country of less educated among the advanced economies (where the average is 27%). Things not change when the data is broken down by age (chart below): the doubling of graduates, class of sixty (9%) to thirty-somethings (17%), does not prevent Italy from the fourth last steps to third to last place (tied with Slovakia, and not to mention that Brazil is not a member OECD), because other countries have grown faster (Mexico and Portugal).
(f) It would be simplistic at this point to consider education as a mere social problem: the knowledge society, it is a sine qua non of economic efficiency of the system. Not surprisingly, since 1998 The OECD notes the degree of literacy of the people treating it as an economic indicator. L ' OECD (2001) not only to test those who can read and write, but defines four profiles of specialties and five levels of competence in assessing "how adults use information to operate in society and in' economy. The four's specialties are: 1. read a prose text, 2. interpret a text document and images, 3. make calculations, 4. solve logic problems. Limiting ourselves to the first profile (diagram below, not too different from the others), the five levels of competence quantify the share of the population capable of doing things as follows:
- (in blue) to find information in a very short text simple and well known, such as a name. 35% of Italians do not go beyond this level of competence.
- (in red) Compare or add two simple present information in a brief statement, avoiding any pitfalls. Another 30% stood at this level and no more than the next.
- (yellow) Answer a simple question summarizing the information obtained from a long text. And 'the minimum level considered by the OECD to navigate in the information society. Not more than 35% of Italians and possesses a 26% goes no further.
- and 5. (In blue, mixed) Answering questions conditional ( if x then y? ), making logical deductions from the intersection of several long texts. About 9% of Italians have such powers.
In short, 65% of the Italian population does not have the minimum literacy skills, according to the OECD, to orient themselves in society (that is "functionally illiterate" or "illiterate"). While less than 10% have the skills necessary to orientarvisi critically and creatively. With such economic consequences?
(f) According to Eurostat (2008), l’Italia è l’ultimo Paese dell’Europa occidentale per numero di famiglie connesse ad Internet (42%), il terz’ultimo dell’UE-27 (60%) davanti a Bulgaria (25%) e Romania (30%), e l’unico ad aver subito una regressione rispetto al 2007 (43%). Una prima conseguenza di ciò è che, secondo Eurostat (2007), il commercio elettronico italiano contribuisce solo per lo 0,9% al fatturato delle imprese, contro una media europea del 4,2%. In pratica, solo Cipro (0,6%) e la Bulgaria (0,5%) fanno meno commercio online. Il dato cambia poco secondo l’ OCSE (2008), che annovera una decina di Paesi in cui l’e-commerce is now more than 10% of sales (see figure below), and Italy ranks second to last with about 2%, ahead of Slovakia. But we must consider that e-commerce is just the most visible aspect of the matter. In fact, the entire services sector to be affected by the contribution of Internet in terms of productivity gains, to the point that, according to the OECD, the productivity of a firm is proportional to the share of employees related to broadband .
The Italian weakness in the Internet economy is often explained in terms of a generic "delay culture "to new technologies, as if it were to acquire more modern habits. But this assumption is contradicted by other data, and first of all by the fact that the Italians, according to Eurostat , boast the third largest in the EU-27 the number of phones per 100 inhabitants (134 compared to an average of 103: more mobile phones people). It is not a rejection of "technology", but the refusal of some technology, and not another. Well, after what has been said, the reason is clear. The technology is rejected which is based on the ability to read and write on a screen, using an alphabetic keyboard, to access a world where everything is produced and arranged by writing (from binary code to HTML, the URLs to the Google index). In short, a hell for that 65% of Italians who does not know the alphabet. It's an interesting place (certainly not a paradise) for only the remaining 35%.
4. In conclusion, the model of Haile to read the Italian specificity in terms of a real "language crisis" of the economy, where innovation of products and processes is hampered by the high proportion of illiteracy of the population. This share depends, as we have seen, the historical weakness of public spending on education, caused by a fiscal policy almost always allergic to the redistributive, imposed by a ruling class largely predatory and corrupt.
Like any self-respecting crisis, this is characterized by feedback loops, where the effects feed back on the causes that produced them, strengthening them further. There is no "crisis" that is, without "vicious circles" that prevent the crisis. In our case, the main one is called, to say the least legal conflict of interest "(and without euphemism" media control of the population), and it works pretty much like this: the corrupt ruling class, which produced the mass of illiterate functional governs the views through the television system, the only source of information available to them, and thereby obtain the consent election, which strengthens it. It therefore has no interest in reducing illiteracy, which is the real quantitative basis of consent. Or to develop new media type alphabetically, which does not know and does not control. In fact, it behaves as if they were considering a threat to its archaic way of exercising power, based on the lack of transparency and participation.
course, want to go into detail, things are more complex. For example, some social groups express a genuine and freely informed consent, which is independent from the influence televisiva e si fonda su interessi reali (per esempio l’interesse a falsificare i bilanci, per quelli che hanno bilanci da falsificare). Mentre altri, oltre a guardare come tutti la televisione (95%), si informano leggendo i giornali (35%), che non appartengono a un solo gruppo, ma a quattro. Sono però dettagli che non falsano il quadro. Né la cornice.
5. La cornice è l’avvicendamento storico tra due tecnologie cognitive, che sono anche due modelli di organizzazione della società. Il vecchio è destinato a perire. Ma tutto dipende, per noi mortali, da quanto ci metterà, da chi porterà con sé, e da come sarà fatto fuori. Decisiva è la nostra parte, perché tutto avvenga quickly and well.
Some, especially in Italy, consider the intentions of delusions use the Internet to protect the rights, or to engage populations in the political management of public affairs. And they probably are. But as they say, the shared dreams can become reality. And, according to the OECD (2008), more than half of us agree that this kind of dreams.
0 comments:
Post a Comment