On Sun, 2008-07-20 at 13:34 +0300, ashok _ wrote: > the funny thing i notice about italians (and i meet many of them...) > is that nobody > admits voting for berlusconi's party, yet he keeps coming back.
kinda like bush, no? guess we just meet the wrong (right?) kind of people. > the other thing is there is a massive disparity between what common > people actually earn and things like cost of buying[...] > (i mean, you could be earning a salary of 1,000 euros...[...]paying a rent of > 800 euros for a very tiny apartment...) i think this is particularly italian. salaries are low compared to living costs everywhere in western europe (perhaps with the exception of switzerland) but italian salaries are particularly low while living costs seem ridiculously high, though it's mainly literally _living_ costs - rent - in big cities. food etc is much cheaper. i'm sure part of the reason (and result) is the enormous black economy in italy, but typically this means people with regular salaries from regular companies with the lowest possibilities for money-on-the-side suffer the most. we frequently get requests from collaborators in italian universities to provide private subcontracts with them rather than working through their universities, which is not something we can usually do though we sympathise... -rishab
