Honestly, with the amount Italy pays its elected representatives, the nation should be one of the most efficiently run countries in the world. It isn’t. Indeed, in terms of political and bureaucratic efficiency, Italy is near the bottom of the barrel.
Here’s a little about how much some of Italy’s mis-managers can earn.
In Italy, you can be a government minister and a city or town mayor at the same time. You get paid for both jobs too and can earn a whopping €280,000 a year. That’s €200,000 for being a minister, plus €80,000 for being a mayor. Can one be a minister and a mayor and do both jobs efficiently? This gem came from today’s Corriere della Sera newspaper and the person concerned is moaning because he may be forced to take a pay cut.
Don’t worry if you can’t make it into Italy’s parliament and have yourself elected as a mayor, because all you need to do to make a little cash is to become a councillor in the Lombardy region of Italy. Your take home pay could very well amount to €17,000 net each month, according to a pay slip doing the rounds on Facebook. That tidy sum should help you make your mortgage, car and, er, helicopter/yacht payments reasonably comfortably. Oh, and by the way, the Lombardy region of Italy is riddled with corruption, as a Italy’s Report investigation documentary has pointed out a few times.
In part, Italy has members of Beppe Grillo’s 5 Star Movement to thank for revealing the stratospheric pay levels of the nation’s politicians.
Stop reading, start speaking
Stop translating in your head and start speaking Italian for real with the only audio course that prompt you to speak.
With sky high pay levels for elected officials in Italy, one would not expect corruption to be much of a problem, except it is. Despite their generous pay levels, politicians think nothing of using €2.5 million of taxpayers cash to buy their sons nice big boats, which is something former Northern League member Umberto Bossi seems to know a little about. Ironically, Bossi loved to shout ‘Roma Ladrona’ – Rome the thief – while, it appears, he himself was doing a spot of thieving.
And with the pay Italy’s elected officials earn, sorry, “earn” is completely the wrong word, receive is better – one would expect Italy to be several orders of magnitude more efficient than Switzerland, except it isn’t.
After learning about the record levels of pay for the people who seem to do very little to make Italy a better place, one may come across stories of 26 year old graduates who work 13 hours a day for €950 a month – one of Italy’s growing number of working poor.
When will Italy get its act together? It’s no wonder taxes are crippling here.
