We know that Italy is in financial trouble...along with Greece, Spain and Portugal, they top the list of the WORSTS in Europe.
So what is a country to do when they have no more money to buy all the nifty stuff that the voters want? Do they trim expenses? Cut corporate taxes? Announce that tax fraud will no longer be tolerated?
Nope! You build a $200 billion dollar high-speed train and then you give everybody back the property taxes they paid in, and then hope to continue the ILLUSION that everything is great!
As you read this, PLEASE notice how the USA appears to be doing the same thing.
It takes a certain talent to live in happy denial, to slide toward the edge of a precipice and be perfectly relaxed about it. Of all the talents that Italians are renowned for, such nonchalance is perhaps their greatest. Their economy is in deep recession; more than one in three young adults are unemployed; they are unable to compete economically with their neighbors; yet they continue as if nothing were happening, or as if a small glitch in the dolce vita could be fixed with the wave of a wand.
In particular, whether in awe or horror, they continue to be enchanted by the pied piper Silvio Berlusconi, the former and perhaps future prime minister and fabulously wealthy media magnate. In the run-up to the elections that begin today, he has promised to abolish the stiff property tax that was introduced by the previous government and is largely responsible for bringing a little credibility back to the country’s finances (and that he voted for himself when it was introduced). Not only would he abolish it, but he would actually pay back what Italians paid on it last year.
Statistics show that tax evasion is endemic, and the more so the more one moves south, to the point that around Naples, dentists declare lower incomes than policemen. Needless to say, the fiscal shortfall has to be made up with government borrowing and higher taxes for those who do pay.
Meanwhile, though sports is glaringly corrupt, fans are as passionate as ever. As the owner of the big soccer club A. C. Milan, Mr. Berlusconi decided, at the beginning of his campaign, to buy the star striker Mario Balotelli. Again he was rewarded in the opinion polls.
The constant discrepancy between how one might expect things to pan out and how they actually do is nothing new. On a tour through Italy in 1869, Mark Twain wrote, “I can not understand how a bankrupt Government can have such palatial railroad depots.”
Things don’t change. Italy recently completed Europe’s fastest train service; one can travel the 360 miles from Milan to Rome nonstop in just 2 hours and 45 minutes. In a country with a huge debt, this wonderful engineering feat has cost an astonishing 150 billion euros (about $200 billion).
Nobody seems sure where the investment came from or how the project will be paid for. One thing is certain: much of the money that legally should have been allotted to local services must have found its way to the high-speed project; to accommodate the few going fast, hosts of working people grind to the office in dirty, overcrowded trains. But what matters is the gleaming image of progress that the service projects.
Wow! Talk about what happens WHEN A NATION FORGETS GOD?...more interested in their sports teams than real world affairs. More interested in their gleaming image than how the project will be paid for. More interested in finding someone who will wave a magic wand and make everything all right for one more day.
Remember that Rome (Italy) fell a few thousand years ago when they got so consumed with stadiums, gladiators, perversion and orgies that they forgot what traits had actually made them a world power...and they lost the empire when they imploded.
Certainly history has a way of repeating itself.
When will this exact story be cut a pasted into an article about America?...where we build $billion dollars sports stadiums in search of constant entertainment, where more is spent on the porn industry than a whole host of societal expenditures AND we just elected Obama to wave a magic wand for another year and PRETEND we can just magically print $1.5 trillion every year to FUND 100% OF OUR ENTIRE GOVERNMENT?
What day was it, exactly, that the average American quit FEARING THE LORD, quit believing in the 10 commandments and exchanged the "pursuit of happiness" for the CONSTANT NEED TO BE HAPPY...whatever the cost and no matter who gets hurt?
This will NOT end well for Italy or for us...the Bible guarantees it.
Where will our hope be as the nations continue to falter?
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