Forty years old, married, one son, salary of around 1500 euros. Let's talk about the typical volunteer of the Italian army. The income, although decent, does not allow distractions in the management of the family economy and, one might add, does not appear adequate for the professionalism and discounted availability available 24 hours a day to a volunteer. Think of the cyclical commitment to "safe roads" and the various emergencies that see the military at the forefront: from public calamities to the demolition of the Morandi bridge up to the health emergency for COVID 19.
However, it is known that, given the impossibility of aligning our defense budget with European parameters, we do not have the financial resources to be allocated to improve the remuneration of the volunteer in question. However, it seems stimulating to propose a brazen parallel, in a national and European context, with the salaries of other servants of the Italian state, far superior to those of the same European level.
It is interesting to note, for example, that the monthly salary of our volunteer is equal to the daily one received by a magistrate of the Constitutional Court. While finding this confrontation frustrating, our volunteer can find comfort and not feel alone as the President of the United States also receives a salary equal to about half that of our constitutionalists and, widening the comparison to the audience of our political world, it seems that Trump earns even less than an Italian member of parliament who adds to his salary various allowances, lump sum reimbursements and multiple accessory fines.
Things don't get better if our volunteer confronts a UK peer. A corporal armyin fact, in addition to receiving an annual salary of just under £ 35.000, he has accommodation that costs him £ 77 a month's rent (including electricity, water and gas costs). The soldier of His Majesty also does not pay pension contributions, travels free of charge on the national territory, does not pay health taxes or local taxes, which is why in comparison with a non-military compatriot of the same level he can count, after the expenses, on a residual monthly availability of 1232 pounds, against 486 of the "bourgeois".
Among the proposals aimed at identifying resources to improve the situation of our volunteer, it is worth mentioning that of the pacifist on duty who proposes to sell not 5 rifles but 5 tanks or 5 fighter-bombers or 5 naval units, an operation that would allow the Defense to weld the well-known backward electricity-water-gas bills but certainly not to address strategic needs, including that of giving impetus to the “green barracks” project advocated by the SME for the benefit of the volunteers married to offspring.
It is therefore necessary to seek partial and zero-cost solutions, first of all, the proximity of the volunteer's place of employment to the original parental habitat. Those who already enjoy this situation are well aware that the practical and economic advantages that derive from it are significant: from family help in emergencies to the communion of certain expenses, without forgetting the savings on travel costs to reach the places of origin perodically. When the distance between them and the volunteer's place of employment is considerable or, worse, the sea is involved, things and accounts get complicated.
The solution-pigeon egg to improve the volunteer's income, it is emphasized "at no cost", is therefore all there: to bring the volunteer as close as possible to his native village. Undoubtedly the needs, the location and the typology of the various departments represent terms of the problem to be assessed and harmonized with the needs of men, but there are no insurmountable difficulties regarding the use of the departments both on the national territory and outside the area. Participation in a mission in Lebanon or Iraq or Afghanistan or the commitment to "safe roads" would not be conditioned, on the contrary, they would derive an indirect advantage given the better availability of the volunteer due to the awareness of being able to count on parental support.
The proposal to find resources at the expense of far-reaching and far-sighted measures such as citizenship income does not seem realistic (however, confirmed a facilitator - to put it in a vogue word - of undeclared work and tax evasion) and the reception of irregular migrants, considering that the latter activity was given a new impulse even in full emergency COVID 19 (see the 276 irregular unknown provenance ditched by the French Ocean Viking in Pozzallo and the 194 Africans of the German Sea Watch landed in Messina). Reflecting on these last two measures, even our volunteer will have felt the pressing need for serious psychological support (it is intended not to illegal immigrants but to those responsible - so to speak - who wanted, favored and allowed the two operations in conjunction with the well-known strict controls set up at national airports for the COVID emergency 19. It is therefore desirable that subjects carrying only tuberculosis and scabies have landed from the two NGO ships, as in the past).
Final note: as long as a Sardinian volunteer's place of employment is closer to the Alps and the Apennines rather than to the Gennargentu, the decision to bring a child into the world is likely to be postponed to ... better times. Therefore, it cannot be excluded that the proposal to bring volunteers closer to their native village may have a small value also to re-propose the fascistiant (that God forgive us) "make more children" and thus counter the worrying denatality that afflicts many countries not only in Sardinia. but also from other regions of Italy.
Photo: Army / web archive
