Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
Land innovations for pensions introduced by the Budget law that has just come into force will not change the status quo much, and in the end the reviled Fornero law which during the electoral campaign was promised to be abolished is still there: except that it will be even more difficult to take advantage of the loopholes to bring forward the retirement age to 67.
And fortunately in Italy there is still some semblance of public health which laboriously ensures a bit of serenity to those who have worked all their lives and do not have private insurance, but to skip queues and long waits and give life back to the medical staff of our exhausted hospitals it would take much more than the palliatives provided in progress.
Someone might answer: “It’s capitalism, darling!” that is, the same economic system that forces hordes of American retirees to abandon their homes and venture across the country with campers and makeshift vehicles in search of seasonal jobs. They call them i new nomadsunderpaid sixty and seventy year olds or with a pension that doesn’t allow them to afford a mortgage and bills, forced to leave the homes where their memories reside to accept what is more than work, real exploitation.
But when there are no alternatives, picking beets in the fields or working ten hours straight in e-commerce warehouses in the pre-Christmas periods is the only option to survive. The journalist recounted this humanity on the road with empathy and an extraordinary spirit of inquiry Jessica Bruder in Nomadlanda book now republished in the Mondadori Oscars.
“Nomadland. An investigative story” by Jessica Bruder (Mondadori).
The author traveled 15 thousand miles with a van and in three years of work she put together a fascinating investigation as much as a novel but which unfortunately is nothing more than reality. Who has seen the film – based on the book – starring Frances McDormandGolden Lion in Venice and winner of three Oscars, already knows what we’re talking about but for everyone it’s really worth reading this incredible report because brings to light a dark side of America that we thought was buried in Steinbeck’s tales of the Great Depression.
The protagonists have a lot to teach us with their formidable vitality and an uncommon ability to reinvent themselves but – as the author hopes – they can help us to reflect on an economic system which, with its increasingly extreme inequalities, risks imploding and overwhelm every civilization.
All articles by Serena Dandini.
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