Italy's horse of a different color

  Milei: The only real news of the year The year 2023 has been far from uneventful and there are scores of very good “year in review” posts. But for an Italian like me, and for the world in general, nothing in my opinion comes close to the free election of Milei in Argentina. Argentina has been a sick man of South America for longer than I have been alive. But that was not always the case, and while present day society, with its weak familial relationships and indifference of history can ignore it, It was indeed a wealthy and thriving society in the latter part of the 1800 and early 1900. For me, that's part of the family lore since of the five brothers one of which was my paternal grandfather, three emigrated to Argentina in the early part of the past century. I probably have more relations there than here in Italy. That was partly due to a federalist constitution and a series of market friendly governments which allowed the country to make the most of its advantages...

  Turin, November 11 th , 2023 Pension schemes, or how to lose a Nobel prize This little known Italian retirement integration system, called TFR, is one of a number of good things that we lost due to a patient and relentless drive towards centralization and government intermediation. Europe has been tinkering with its pension systems for decades. Italy in particular has been particularly active, since we historically had no private pension system tradition. So when the tinkering started, the discussions were mostly on three aspects: defined contribution vs defined benefits, and modification of the calculation method of the latter; the combined problem of contribution period length and minimum retirement age; “Third pillar” pensions, i.e. private integration schemes, which are part of the object of this piece. The establishment of a “third pillar” in Italy was due to projections that new entrants in the job market would by the end of their working life re...

 Priceless eggs in variable gravity, Contd. I may have found the missing link in "Why left wing movements are pro Palestine" (i.e., indirectly helping Hamas). Many people I know and esteem are worried about the pro Palestine Rallies here in Europe and other Western countries, but the real puzzle is why people who would be killed or tortured in Gazah for their beliefs support Hamas over Israel.  Then it struck me, HARD. Jews in Europe are NOT the demographic that is getting the worst deal, at all. And that has to do with the ideological framework of the friends of unbridled immigration. So in Europe WHO can be worse off than Jews, in terms of personal risk of violence, discrimination and public opprobrium, given that not even acts that would have made an average citizen of Nazi Germany puke has been sufficient? For that I have to thank my friend Camilla Conti, and her daily press review on youtube (in Italian, highly recommended). This morning, she pointed out that not...

  Turin, October 15 th , 2023 Juggling priceless eggs in variable gravity We have no political leaders, only intermediaries. Hence these dismiss any position in which their “employer” ends up with an advantage as unpalatable. And if you play to draw or lose but not win, end results are less than optimal for western countries and cultures.The title is a quote from “ The mote in God's eye ”, a book that I highly recommend reading. The conflict between Israel and Hamas has brought anguish and turmoil everywhere. I have been following it up close because on top of listing geopolitics and military conflict as things I am most interested in, I have friends in Israel, and I am a friend of Israel, before someone asks or implies. But that's not the main focus of a thought that dawned on me this morning. My assessment of what has happened or might happened in the theater of operation is mine to share, and I share that....sparingly. But what caught my attention, also because it dire...

August 9th, 2023   THE END OF MELONI? DISCLAIMER: nothing in this article is or is meant to be "financial advice" under current legislation. drink fluids, eat healthy and exercise. I had some doubts about how the new government of Italy would develop, see my previous post on the subject . But here we are, not one year into the current government, and it all falls apart in one day. First an explanation: by “fall apart” I do not mean that the government falls, loses parliamentary votes, suffers internal defections etc. If anything, the one speculative thoughts I had, that Meloni would last the legislature, is the less dented of my opinions, expectations and desires. In fact, I surmise that between declaring the experience ended and proclaiming a snap election, or the present predicament, the first was the better alternative... provided she had an inkling about what happened. What I mean is that what made Meloni "something else" is lost, and probably irretrie...

  The price of nothing and the value of nothing Cecil Graham: What is a cynic? Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing. ― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan money as a Procustes bed conciliating all human desires and needs Price is a mechanism optimising, for any level of total wealth, instantaneous localized optimal deployment of resources. People don’t grasp that, and politicians oppose it. See "it’s unfair that masks cost 10 $ if the manufacturing price is 12c !!1!”, all the while disregarding (or hiding, in the unlikely event that they knew what they are talking about) all the assumptions underlying their words: that goods can be locally produced, with materials readily available or sourced locally, using plants and machinery already in place, with jigs premade f...

[First published April 29th 2023] Why everything is defined as urgent...and why this is mostly a mind game. Try using this information filter: "90% of the actionable political movements claiming what they are active in is an Emergency would disappear the moment their cause would NOT be treated as an emergency, but as a problem." [Usual disclaimer: nothing in this article should be construed as “advice” under present EU financial legislation, your mileage may vary] I admit that I follow mainstream media less and less, but at various points in recent past I wondered about the reason why. Of course, both the average and median quality is appalling, but that's not it. Until it finally dawned on me. Because it's depressing. Before the “blinding flash of the obvious” memes appear, let me rephrase it. I may be mistaken, human memory is an overrated instrument since we basically rewrite it all the time, albeit not at the level of Netflix promoting the idea of Cle...