Dreaming California - the fifth largest economy in the World

California recently came back to the fifth position in the list of the largest economies in the World, following US, China, Japan and Germany.

California’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew $127 billion between 2016 and 2017 to more than $2.7 trillion. Higher than Uk and France.

London is suffering the Brexit and the depreciation of the Pound, whilst California has two great and consistent assets in cinema industry and Silicon Valley. A small but significant part of this wealth comes from the agriculture and in particular from the wine production.

Of course California is not an independent country, even if some independent movements are pushing for that. But it is interesting to think how impressive is the economy of a state of Usa in comparison with the states of Europe (only Germany is better).

GDP is not the best indicator of the wealth of a country, but it defines well how a country can be powerful. And California is definitely a benchmark for high-tech and entertainment. 

It is also interesting to take a look at the full list from the 15 top economies in the World:

1. United States $19.391 trillion
2. China $12.015 trillion
3. Japan $4.872 trillion
4. Germany $3.685 trillion
5. California $2.747 trillion
6. United Kingdom $2.625 trillion
7. India $2.611 trillion
8. France $2.584 trillion
9. Brazil $2.055 trillion
10. Italy $1.938 trillion
11. Texas $1.696 trillion
12. Canada $1.652 trillion
13. New York $1.547 trillion
14. South Korea $1.538 trillion
15. Russia $1.527 trillion

(From Business Insider)

Read More

Who was Marielle Franco?

 

I will be honest. I have never heard about Marielle Franco before the 14th of March, the day in which she was brutally killed in a targeted political assassination.

 

But reading her story made me think. How many brave people are there in the World?

I was thinking to the sad story of Giulio Regeni, the Italian researcher killed in Egypt in 2016 or Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese Journalist killed in 2017. All people who weren't scared to stand up for the truth and for to fight against corruption and illegality.

Marielle Franco was, as written in an article on the Independent by Glenn Greenwald a "black LGBT + woman in a country notoriously dominated by racism, sexism and traditional religious dogma". Coming from one on the poorest Rio's slum, "she became a single mother at the age of 19, but she graduated at college, obtained a master in sociology, and then became one of the city’s most effective human rights activists". In 2016, she became the 5th most voted candidate in the elections for the Rio city council.

We think too much to ourselves, to work mostly doing something we don't like, to earn money to buy things we don't need. But we never think about the others, about the system in which we live. 

"Bowling alone" was written by Robert D. Putnam in 2000 to describe the collapse of the sense of community in America. Unfortunately this tendency increased in the last twenty years. 

Fortunately, there are still people like Marielle Franco, to remind us that we are not living alone.

Read More

No shopping on Sunday! What do you think?

Poland recently approved a law that ban Sunday trading. This means that from today (11th March)  every other Sunday the bans will take place (with the exception of some Sundays before religious holidays). 

In Poland the law is the result of the pressure coming mainly by the Church and Solidarnosc, in order to allow employees to spend more time on Sunday with their family and participate in the Religious Ceremonies.

The discussion is really wide, as you can see on Wikipedia.

From one side, it is good to see that people already working the entire week in a shop can have one day break on Sunday and spend it with their families and friends. And for sure, as consumers, we can survive buying what we need in the remain 6 days of the week.

On the other hand, the risk to cut many part-time jobs or push some companies to open during the night or extend their open hours during the week is real, and it wouldn't improve the conditions of the workers at all.

I personally think that Sunday is a good day to rest for everybody. But if a good law is needed to regulate the ban of shopping, it is also needed to regulate the rest of the week, if not the workers will have to work more on the other days. 

Common sense and balance are always the elements the Legislator should consider to regulate a sector.

And you? What do you think?

For more information about Polish Sunday trading ban, you can check Wroclaw Uncut website.

Read More

Which Italy will we see on Monday?

So here we are!

Tomorrow is the Election day in Italy. After 5 years, we will have a new Parliament and a new (maybe) Government.

But which is the picture of Italy today? And how will it change since the next week?

Whilst from abroad the Italian political arena is a funny show with hilarious characters (see John Oliver video), the reality is really sad. In the last five years we have seen different governments with no clear strategic view on the future of the country. And it is very probable that on Monday we will have no real winner (thanks to the new electoral law) and a government supported by heterogeneous political forces will be probably formed.

During the electoral campaign, the candidates have promised everything as I wrote few weeks ago in this blog. I talked to many friends who really didn't know for which party to vote. And we are even worried about the comeback of Silvio Berlusconi, at the lovely age of 81 years.

In the last years the economy went a little bit better but many structural problems still stay in Italy: corruption, bureaucracy, taxis, fiscal evasion, immigration policies and many others.

But in an article published recently, it was highlighted how the education is the most important and urgent problem for Italy. The government cut the budget for education in the last decade more than the other European countries, there are less people with an University Degree, but even less job offers for specialized role.

Yes, that's the point. In a global economy, education is the key for success, without it there is no future. And where is the ruling class who will bring us to the future?

Let's be optimistic, and GOOD LUCK to us!

  

Read More

Eu & Turkey: ready for a wedding?

At the beginning of February, during a visit in Italy, Erdogan claimed again the will for Turkey to enter in the European Union.

The relation between Europe and Turkey are becoming every year worse, especially since the mid-2016 failed coup attempt against Erdogan. And it is the news of few hours ago that the European Union threatened to cancel a summit with Turkey next month because of Turkish tensions with Cyprus over energy exploration (here more info).

Officially the position Brussels is very clear. The negotiation for the enlargement to Turkey is frozen till there will be a visible progress in the fields of human rights and independence of the justice.

But the situation within the Eu governments is much more complex.

From one side, Erdogan is necessary to contain the immigration from Syria. Moreover, Ankara is fundamental for the stabilization of the area.

On the other side, the Turkish government is far away from the principles of a democracy (rights, justice, freedom of expression,...). 

But even if Turkey was a democratic country - and this is my question - would Eu really allow Ankara to enter in the European? What about the building of a European Federation: would this be still possible after the enlargement to a huge and powerful country like Turkey? And which kind of integration could be possible?

Read More

What a destiny for the Terzani's Turtle...

Have you ever heard about Tiziano Terzani?

For many of us Terzani represents the determination to follow your dreams and the freedom of discovering and traveling around the World.

He graduated in one of the most prestigious university in Italy (the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies) and he got an excellent job in Olivetti. But he decided that this was not his destiny and after having left his job, he studied Chinese and moved to China with his family in the 70s.

Terzani and his family in Turtle House

He lived in many countries later on. Among them, he lived for some years in Thailand, in a house in an international neighborhood in Bankok: Turtle House (so called for the turtle which lived in the lake over there).

I had the pleasure to visit Bangkok and Turtle House in November. As the house was mentioned in a very famous book (Un indovino mi disse, 1995), I was curious to visit it and the guardian allowed me to see all the rooms of the house.

Turtle House is a real oasis in an area of Bangkok very gray and surrounded by Skyscrapers. 

Unfortunately few days ago it has been announced that the house will be demolished and another skyscraper will be build up.

The Societa' Dante Alighieri (a cultural organization to promote Italian language abroad) tried to convert the House in a cultural center but without success.

For all of us who read Terzani's books and who dreamed about the places he visited, this is a very sad news. 

When I was in Thailand I had also the possibility to visit the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok (that is now a museum) and it is really a pity not to see something similar also for Terzani's house.

Anyway, I think that Turtle House will stay always in our memories, as Tiziano life.

Read More

Korea united? Just temporary for the Olympic Games

The 38th parallel that devides in two separate states Korea since the end of the World War II in 1945, is one of the most militarized and most sensitive area in the World. 

It has represented for decades one of the expression of the Cold War and it is now the line that divides the rich and capitalistic South by the "communist", dictatorship North.

The current Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, started few days ago, have seen the temporary reconciliation of the two Korea with a unified team under a new white flag. 

Moreover, we have seen the historical handshake between Moon Jae-in, the President of South Korean and Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un.

handshake between the Moon Jae-in, President of South Korean and Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un

I am not going to write that sport unifies people, or that the spirit of the Olympic Games wins over the divisions. This is a huge (probably the most important) sport event in the World and it attracts a lot of sponsors and investments. Business is business.

But still, North Korea is one of the most cryptic country in the World. And looking at people from that country, especially the sister of their dictator, participating in the most capitalistic event on the Planet, it is something that must be highlighted.

Read More

Poland's Holocaust law and the ghosts from the past

The news has been spread everywhere in Europe and not only: Poland’s Senate approved a highly controversial bill on Thursday that bans any Holocaust accusations against Poles as well as descriptions of Nazi death camps as Polish (source The Washington Post). If President Duda will approve it, the law will become effective with a penalty for the transgressors up to three years in jail.

It is a little bit difficult to understand why this law was issued.

During the II WW, six millions of poles died (the half were Jewish). Poland is the first country for number of Righteous Among the Nations (an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis): 6706. 

It is also true that some Poles helped Nazis during the occupation and the war like in the case of the Jedwabne pogrom, where 340 Polish Jews were killed by a group of Polish inhabitants of the town with the complicity of the Nazis.

US and Israel stated that this law is against the freedom of speech and also against the responsibilities of Poles during the II World War.

What I see is that it looks hard for all the countries take their own responsibility on the shame on the Holocaust and on the caused that originated the war. 

In a very interesting book - Origins Of The Second World War - the author, A.J.P. Taylor, in the Sixties was claiming how not only Germany was the cause of the war, but many other events under the responsibility of all the European Countries, UK and France of course, but also Poland and Czechoslovakia for instance.

Auschwitz was a Nazi camp and even if it is within the Polish border, it was created by the Germans during their occupation. But this doesn't mean deny the responsibility of everybody in what happened. 

An interesting article by Jonathan Freedland published on The Gardian explains well the Polish problem:

It’s not hard to see why this has happened. Polish nationalists want Poles to have been the untainted victims of Nazism: it’s hard to admit that too many were willing assistants to genocide. Like almost every nation occupied by the Nazis, and unlike Germany itself, Poland has not yet made a clear-eyed reckoning with its past. It has not fully wrestled with the fact that a Jewish community that once made up 10% of its population, and which was the largest in Europe, has gone, murdered en masse in just over three years. “Poland is not at peace with its Jewish ghosts,” says [Konstanty] Gebert. “These are phantom limbs. You amputate the limb and it still hurts.”

Read More

Visiting Auschwitz

Today 27th January is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the media, as usual, commemorate the genocide that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jewish people, 200,000 Roma people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

I think that the rhetoric that is usually adopted in commemorating this day, obscures partially what really happened in that period. It is really difficult to understand, at least till you have the opportunity to visit Auschwitz.

I live in Poland since over six years but just the last summer I have decided and planned to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp that is located in Oświęcim, 50km from Krakow.

Visiting Auschwitz should be definitely something everyone must do at least once in our own life. Because seeing all the shoes that where gathered by the people who arrived and died there, the grey hair and the amount of cups and glasses really make you realize the dimension of what happened.

When you arrive in the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) main entrance, the guide says that an estimated 1.3 million people were sent to the camp, of whom at least 1.1 million died. And you start to think about those people in line after hours of traveling in a train and just waiting to die.

It is impossible to imagine living in the camp during the winter (where the temperature is constantly under zero), with no food, no warming clothes, nothing.

It is so hard to imagine that life, so impossible to realize how some people could survive, that words are simply not enough. You need to go there and see.

We assume that it will never happen again, but we forget easily. And it is happening now with Rohingya in Myanmar, it happened with Tutsi in Ruanda and with Bosniak in the Former Jugoslavia.

Read More

How much do the promises of the Italian politicians cost?

This is an important year for Italy: in few weeks the Political Elections will take place. And the electoral campaign already started, with a bunch of unrealistic promises from the opponents.  

Renzi, former Prime Minister, is proposing - for instance - the abolition of the tax to the national public broadcasting company Rai. This would cost 1.8 billion Eur per year. The new left led by the current President of the Senate Grasso, is proposing instead the abolition of the University taxes, at the cost of almost 2 billion euros per year. Of course, those will be the first elections in which the generation born in 2000 will go to vote.

On the right side, we have seen the back on the political stage of the eternal outsider Silvio Berlusconi, who is proposing the abolition of almost all the taxes: for cars, for donations, for inheritance plus a new fiscal system of flat tax (40 billions). He and his alley - Lega Nord - are also proposing the abolition of the last pension reform, that will cost the impressive amount of 80 billions euro/year since 2025.

The Moviment 5 Stelle, that has good chances to win the elections, is proposing the creation of a "citizen income" that would cost 15 billions per year.

Politicians are doing to many promises that are unrealistic but they are not explain us how we can develop resources, work, wealth in a country that is in permanent decline since three decades. 

Political leadership is looking at the people who have interests to defend (pensions, salaries, properties,...) and they are not providing a vision of how we will handle our future. 

Italian electoral campaign is funny and desolately sad at the same time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you are interested in the cost of the electoral promises, you can take a look at this article published by La Repubblica (sorry, in Italian).

Read More

Once upon a time there was the Czechoslovakia

At the beginning of January fell the anniversary of the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. It happened 25 years ago, when after a political agreement between Prague and Bratislava, there was the creation of Czech Republic and Slovakia (united in the same entity since 1918).

It is strange to think about the "Velvet Divorce" now, also remembering that in a poll of September 1992, just the 37% of Slovaks and 36% of Czechs wanted the separation.

The story after the dissolution is clear: at the beginning Prague developed faster, but once Slovakia entered in the Eu, Bratislava became much more competitive, also adopting Euro.

It is interesting to notice that:

"While raw nationalism fueled the conflict in Yugoslavia, economics and inept leadership were the prime causes of Czechoslovakia’s schism—a dynamic that presages the struggle for independence in contemporary Catalonia, a region of Spain."  (From The Economist: The impact of Czechoslovakia’s split)

The parallel with what is going on in Barcelona is obvious. With not real and strong reasons, elites divided a big country. In Czechoslovakia there were no troubles, in Jugoslavia thousands of people died. But what is the point to be independent, if than you want be part of European Union anyway?

Read More

Persepolis - what is going on in Iran

Iran is the second largest Country in the Middle East. It also has large reserves of fossil fuels – which include the world's largest natural gas supply and the fourth-largest proven oil reserves.

Iran is a major political and religious player in the area and it is normal that when a huge wave of protests affects the whole country like it happened in the last days, all the international attention is focused on understanding what is going on.

The famous picture of the girl who is protesting without dressing her hijab

The problem is that it is really difficult to understand this country full of contradictions and overall, with a huge control on the media from the State.

What I understood is that the protests have been pushed by the conservatives against the President Rohuani, but it has been quickly developed in a much wider protest against the corruption and the economic stagnation of the country.

What is interesting in those demonstrations is that they were not led by any political party but built up via social media. The protests involved also small cities, where people are not claiming for more freedom, but for more work and against the increase of the prices.

Even if it seems the central Government has been able to repress the demonstrations, it doesn't mean that the problems at the oring of it will disappear. We will see in the next months if those tensions will bring some important changes in Iran.

For further reference  I would suggest this article from Il Post (in Italian) and another from BBC very interesting as well.

Read More