Poor Italy

Not all my posts are going to be on the upside. I read some alarming statistics regarding the poverty level of Italians and I thought I would pass the information on to you. The data is from Corriere della Sera Magazine (Nov.13 2008) with a photograph of an elderly woman (not a homeless person) going through trash looking for food:

1,000,000 is the number of jobs that are estimated to be lost in Italy in the next six months.

0 is the growth for Europe while Italy is in a recession.

35,000 is the estimated number of jobs to be lost in the next few months within the companies of Alitalia, Unicredit, Merloni, Telecom, Fiat and Natuzzi.

1000's are the workers who will lose their jobs within the small and medium sized companies that work in some way with the larger aformentioned companies.

84 of 100 are the families that are risking home foreclosure and are being saved by loans and other forms of special installment payments.

1 of every two is the Italian in June of this year that could not afford to eat in a pizzeria.

The article continues by stating that tens of thousands of families that once could count on two incomes (husband and wife) will have to make it with only one income. Incomes will be halved but it will not be possible to cut drastically the lifestyle because these are not families that lead a comfortable lifestyle and that will only have to sacrifice the superfluous. In the large part of the cases those who will be hit the hardest by the recession will be those who already had a hard time getting to the next paycheck. So naturally, having less money means consuming less and adding to the already contracting economy.

"This is the situation and it is only the beginning. The worst is yet to come."