Just browse any newspaper, Italian or European, coated or not, to realize how much attention to luxury and economy resulting is predominant. Yet the dramatic figures of the crisis are there for all to see: net loss of purchasing power of most workers, rising rates of unemployment and underemployment, with peaks of exceptional severity among young people and regions of the South, more people in poverty or at risk of social exclusion.
Here instead multiply everywhere Exclusive Luxury Hotel and Resort, sprouting like mushrooms, in town and the province, wellness centers and luxury homes, appear by magic in an Italian landscape has always been hostile, for obvious reasons, in this type of infrastructure, golf courses and marinas for yachts and superyachts.
E 'a few days ago an article (New Venice 28/9/10) accompanied by a map of Lido di Venezia show in which all real estate operations expected in the coming years. A closer look, surprising as more than a billion euro of new real estate investments, albeit indirectly, anything about public services (schools, health, social work) or standard housing facilities. No. 'instead swarming with luxury homes, docks, luxury resorts, swimming pools, etc.. And what applies to the Lido, is the historic city. And what is true of Venice seems to be constant so many parts of our "happy" Italian territory.
Moreover this is the country of Scrooge and Berlusconi Villa Certosa, in which, the chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, earn 435 times as derived from their daily work to an employee Pomigliano d'Arco. Why wonder then that the most promising market is the luxury goods and investment elite?
seems to be back in three centuries ago, when full 700 European intellectuals are questioned and the effects on luxury consumption risicatissima a caste of nobles and rentiers or could not produce the wealth of nations.
This debate, known as the "controversy over luxury, contrasted by famous authors such as Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau and less known as Mandeville and Melon. Beyond the moral considerations on luxuries such as vice and debauchery, the crux of the issue was the very model of society to promote and encourage. In that context, in particular the analysis was part of what were the economic implications of increased stimulant consumption.
In the "luxury" written for the Encyclopédie by Jean-François de Saint-Lambert reports the main arguments in favor at the expense of luxury. Among the advantages are listed as "the welfare state, the circulation of money, the advancement of knowledge and the production of works of art, among the disadvantages are mentioned:" the unequal distribution of wealth, the destruction of the landscape, ' weakening of the courage and the stifling of public interests. "
Why repeat now, in 2010, such considerations? I would say for two reasons.
The first is that although the economy of luxury had a specific function in support of demand and therefore economic growth in the pre-industrial European states, historically the situation is deeply changed. For a long time after the war, the creation - as the economists would say - of effective demand has been allocated to public spending and welfare policies in particular.
Why today should therefore focus on the ancient economy of luxury rather than advocating a democratic revival of investment in public services? The question is deliberately naive and equally obvious answer: the market, beauty!
But when it comes, like the Lido of Venice, public decision making in favor of private financial groups that invest in property and luxury of common land resources that will benefit few people, this answer is not obvious and banal more acceptable.
The second consideration is more bitter: the role of luxury consumption in European societies of the eighteenth century coincided with a situation of widespread poverty and inequity was clearly the product of scary. This dramatic situation, you know, was translated, the end of the Age of Enlightenment, in the collapse of the ancien regime and the outbreak of the revolution of 1789. And the epilogue is well known: many of the leading supporters of the effective demand were the guests of Madame Guillotine.
Giampietro Pizzo
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