Italian Taxi Drivers Hail LaRouche Movement Expose of Taxi Rereg

May 21 (EIRNS)--Taxi drivers in Italy are mobilizing to turn back the deregulation program advanced by the current center-left coalition government which has made them the target of a vilification campaign in the name of allowing the "free market" to determine transportation costs. By claiming that taxis cost more in Italy than in other European countries, and promising to make the sector more "flexible" by issuing licenses for many new drivers, the proposed deregulation would open the door for lower wages, higher prices, and the manipulation of the market by a private monopoly.

An article denouncing the fraudulent argument behind the deregulation campaign, written by Claudio Giudici of the Movimento Solidarieta' (the LaRouche movement in Italy), and posted on the MoviSol website, has been circulating among associations of taxi drivers in Rome, Milan and Florence, and may become the basis for a larger campaign against the deregulation of public services implemented in the name of "consumer capitalism." In fact, a Bank of Italy study used to promote the government's campaign, actually shows that taxis do not cost more in Italy than elsewhere in Europe, and that the highest costs are in countries which have already deregulated. Furthermore, the key data which emerges is the underdevelopment of subway systems in large Italian cities.

The larger issue is the attempt to replicate the type of deregulation and privatization programs implemented in countries such as the U.S. and Britain during the 1980s and 1990s, where the "magic of the marketplace" led to the decimation of the U.S. rail system, the bankruptcy of multiple major airlines, and the infamous private rail system in Britain which claimed numerous lives. The premise behind such "reforms" has always been that private is more efficient than public, but the reality has been that in the absence of state regulation, speculative interests have lost no time in extracting every ounce of profit they could from the transportation sector, before leaving formerly effective companies to collapse.

The Italian deregulation campaign is an excellent example of the manipulation of public perceptions in order to advance the agenda of globalization: by promising savings of a few Euros to the less than 1% of the population which uses taxis, the intention is to initiate a series of reforms aimed at opening regulated sectors of the economy up to private financial interests. The Movimento Solidarieta's rebuttal makes it clear that only an FDR-style program of massive state investment in infrastructure can truly increase the efficiency of public services, in turn increasing the productivity of the private economy.