When Italy’s Escalator Ground to a Halt
Postwar Italy’s “escalator” system kept wages ahead of price hikes. In the 1980s, a socialist government brought it grinding to a halt — sending workers’ incomes on a decades-long downward trend.
The first socialist Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi speaks at a public meeting, 1980s. Despite his proclaimed socialism, Craxi would betray workers during the economically tumultuous decade that followed the oil crisis. Alberto Roveri / Mondadori via Getty Images
In August 1983, Bettino Craxi became Italy’s first Socialist prime minister — but it didn’t herald a triumph for socialism, or even for his Partito Socialista Italiano. Craxi is today most infamous for destroying that hundred-year-old party in a corruption scandal that resulted in him fleeing to Tunisia to avoid jail time. He also played a decisive […]
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