Of Paolo Becchi e Giovanni Zibordi
Source: Paolo Becchi

Over the last ten years, Italy's GDP has increased by 100 billion. Bit, very little, let's talk about the "nominal" GDP, i.e. the value of the annual product in euros, which also includes the effect of inflation. Financial wealth (money, conti, titles, policies) instead it increased by 1,100 billion, ten times as much. Before the introduction of the euro, thanks also to inflation, Nominal GDP often increased by as much as 7 o 8% per year and even in the first years of the euro it grew by 4 o 5% the year.

This obviously made all the debt more sustainable, that property prices would also rise, that there were few “rotten” loans in the bank. Dal 2008 instead there were four years in which the GDP (inclusive of inflation) it dropped and after ten years it has barely risen since 1,630 a 1,730 billion.

Wealth in euros in the bank instead, after initially descending on the 3,200 around the 2009 has started to increase again 1,100 billion, and now it's about 4,300 billion. This is because the values ​​of securities have increased on the markets thanks to the ECB's policies and because Italians have saved much more.

Italians have net wealth (net of debts) per capita among the highest in the world, higher than the Germans and English and slightly higher also than that of the French. This financial wealth figure shows one thing: It's not true that everything has gone wrong in recent years, a part of the population, the wealthier and older one did not suffer too much. If we talk about real estate wealth, yes, in Italy property values ​​dropped and never recovered.

The Bankitalia table shows the trend in the net wealth of young and old people in Italy. The data is up to 2013, if they were updated we would see a greater increase, but the picture is quite sensational. Real estate prices have doubled between 1999 and the 2008 and young people therefore bought houses that cost twice as much from older people, which however immediately depreciated. In addition, the employment crisis and the reduction in wages with fixed-term contracts have affected young people and so have pension reforms, while the loss of income for the elderly was compensated thanks to various securities and investments

Fathers and sons", not in the sense of Turgenev's famous novel, but in a much more materialistic sense: the “fathers” have financial wealth and the “children” live off work or are desperately looking for one. What can we conclude from this macroscopic gap between GDP which increases little and wealth which increases a lot and between the financial situation of the elderly and the young?

The politics of austerity, which the EU forced us to do had the effect of increasing income, financial wealth, to the detriment of production and work. Wealth, “money in the bank”, however, they are sterile, they produce nothing except more money through interest and capital gains, which, however, in the end are an indirect tax on those who work and pay taxes on what they produce.

However, it is important to realize that we are not all in the same boat, the widespread narrative according to which "all Italians have suffered from the euro and austerity" is false. A part of the population has continued to do well and is the one that has income, money that earns more money. There has never been so much money in the bank, policies, stocks and funds that continue to perform. Who had a company and liquidated it and put the money in securities, funds and more has earned. Whoever kept the company open often ate part or all of the assets instead. The politics of austerity has been good for those who live on income, while he punished those who work and produce.

But the ruling class, both entrepreneurial and in the media, in politics, in the judiciary etc. it is obviously made up of people who have money saved up. The euro and austerity system preserves and increases their accounts. For them the crisis is a relative fact, which does not affect them personally. This is why all the wealthy classes today are united against leaving the euro. Of course these classes do not constitute the majority in the country, as you can see, the “losers” try to vote in an alternative way, hoping things change. But the resistance is strong, very strong, because the euro was not bad for everyone.