Italy's Youth Exodus

Much of Europe, and especially Italy, has a huge exodus problem.
It simply does not pay to be young and educated when the inbred corporate state picks all winners and losers, the employed and unemployed.
The big problem is we are becoming more like them by the day.  Will our youth have opportunity here, or will we saddle them with the back-breaking obligations of entitlements for the "me generation" baby-boomers? Beyond our own, will the best and brightest from other countries still come here?  Will we even let them in?  At the margins, I sense we are already losing this battle. Sadly, in the worst case, I hope there will at least be a land of opportunity somewhere for our youth to go to.
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It's not the type of advice you would usually expect from the head of an elite university. In an open letter to his son published last November, Pier Luigi Celli, director general of Rome's LUISS University, wrote, "This country, your country, is no longer a place where it's possible to stay with pride ... That's why, with my heart suffering more than ever, my advice is that you, having finished your studies, take the road abroad. Choose to go where they still value loyalty, respect and the recognition of merit and results."
The letter, published in Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, sparked a session of national hand-wringing. Celli, many agreed, had articulated a growing sense in his son's generation that the best hopes for success lie abroad. Commentators point to an accelerating flight of young Italians and worry that the country is losing its most valuable resource. And with reforms made all but impossible by Italy's deep-rooted interests and topsy-turvy politics — a schism in the ruling coalition seemed this summer to threaten Silvio Berlusconi's government once again — many are starting to wonder if the trend can be reversed. "We have a flow outward and almost no flow inward," says Sergio Nava,


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2024136-1,00.html#ixzz124KvzWqj