| > I'm not German Well, then you've absorbed a biased outlook pushed mostly by the German press. > Italian pensions are about 90% of the former salary? Ahaha, they were, maybe, 30 years ago. This has long changed, but obviously these changes take generations to be reflected in stats - and we're obviously not going to kill existing pensioners. > Sure the Ruhr existed, have you been there lately? Does it matter? You said the German miracle was achieved with 0 natural resources, and I've just proven that statement to be utterly false - which should maybe prompt you to revise your positions. The truth is that Germany powercharged its economy with coal; since then they've been good at maintaining that advantage, but it's undeniable that they had an advantage like few other European countries. Another advantage is a largely flat surface that makes it very easy to build transport infrastructure, something much more complex in mountainous areas like most of Italy, Spain, and Greece. In fact, it's half a miracle that Italy developed complex manufacturing districts in the Alpine valleys. > Draghi tried to work on that Pretty much every Italian PM since the 90s tried to work on that, with various degrees of success. As shown by the Twitter thread linked in another post, Italy actually shrunk their debt faster than any other country over the last 25 years, with wide-ranging cuts. But 80s stereotypes refuse to die even in the face of facts, generating self-fulfilling prophecies in the speculative markets. It's in everyone's interest, including northern countries', that these stereotypes be removed from the public debate. If this cannot be done, sharing debt is the only other option to stabilize a currency from which norther countries benefit disproportionately. And that's what the ECB is effectively doing, measure after measure. It should have been done 20 years ago, as many people asked; but apparently doing it the hard way was politically necessarily, so here we are. |