In Milan you spend more than you earn

Recently, a survey published by Adesso and also appeared in Corriere della Sera showed that 62 percent of Under 40s in Milan are not only unable to save one euro of their salary but also that they often spend more than they earn. Those who want to make it on their own simply cannot. Recently, the phrase most commonly heard coming out of the mouths of those who have been residing in Milan for more than a decade, having come to the city to study from some remote province and then stopping to work, is usually: «I'm so over this city» which refers to the fact that the city has simply stopped being as exciting and vibrant as it once was - but no one could point out why. Thousands of young people come to the city every year dreaming, if not of finding success, at least of escaping from a vast and monotonous provincial universe where history itself seems to have come to a standstill, where the average age is rising higher and higher, and the public debate still entangles itself in questions of gender and sexual orientation. Milan promises success, modernity, a glimpse of the outside world, an international horizon - yet in the post-Covid years that afflatus has faded. Nightlife has become an increasingly standardized, mechanical, and exorbitant experience; a Saturday night out weighs on the wallet as much as a car overhaul, and even if one simply went out for air, the spread of micro-crime has created a sense of insecurity and fear. And this is without mentioning the absurd task of finding a house to rent, finding a job, settling down - in a word, living.

The situation, according to those commenting on the results of the online survey, is not particularly rosy elsewhere. Everyone knows that our country is the only one in the OECD where salaries have not increased since 1990, and even in cases where they do grow, they still cannot keep up with inflation, hemorrhaging taxation on labor. A Today article from last year reads: «According to Eurostat, the average salary in Italy for the 18-24 age group is 15,858 euros, close to the EU average of 16,825, but more is earned in Germany (23,858 euros), France (19,482), the Netherlands (23,778) and Belgium (25,617). Italians born after 1986 have the lowest average per capita income ever». The cultural climate this creates in the Under 40s, especially those who have not been able to enjoy financial aid from their parents, is one of astonishment and indignation, if not resentment, toward Gen X, those parents born from the second half of the 1960s to the very early 1980s, who in past decades, with salaries that did not exceed two thousand euros per month could afford to buy houses and start a family, perhaps even take an annual trip. Today, any citizen could tell scientists and sociologists that with this economy deciding to support a child (there are already horror stories circulating among 30-somethings about how to place their kid in a kindergarten) means giving up every desire, pleasure and personal expendable money to sacrifice themselves 100 percent. And in Milan, the difficulty is threefold: in the city of full-time and overtime, it is complicated to do one's laundry, let alone raise a child.

Without wishing to go to the trouble of the big issues, the comments of both Avanti and Corriere della Sera conclude, in short, that the solution is one that even a five-year-old could imagine: more money. More money is simply needed. But this is not the place to discuss minimum wages and big social changes - one can, however, discuss the evolution of a dream, that of Milan as the big getaway, of Milan as the modern (and often decadent) beacon of an ankylosed and coarsened Italian society that still gets made over a peach ad, Fedez making out with Rosa Chemical at Sanremo or a random influencer's aperitivo in the mountains, which equates CBD cannabis shops with heroin dealing spots, which senilely continues to discuss trite issues that the new, apathetic and disillusioned generations couldn't care less about and which instead the populous throngs of boomers and Gen Xers find absurdly relevant, effectively blocking the cultural evolution of a country where people are incapable of even filming a TV series with modern technical standards and themes. But this is not a problem, or at least it wasn't, because one could always go to Milan to find one's peers and oneself, to live outside the box or even just to make it without settling into the lukewarm bourgeois grayness that covers 90 percent of the country like a blanket of radioactive ash. Yet even the cultural exuberance of a city that once gave hope has now become commodified, every cultural event has become marketing, and every bit of authentic, genuine enthusiasm seems to have withered in the general neglect. But perhaps the most distressing fact is this: young people still want to come to Milan because, even if it were the worst of all possible metropolises, it would still be the best we have.