“Sciopero” is one of the words a traveler needs to know. It means “strike” as in labor dispute.
But it’s not labor that’s in dispute these days, it’s the price of things people need to live on. Like pasta.
Evidently, the siphoning off of grains to distill into ethanol used in bio-fuels has cause a 25% spike up in the cost of pasta, as well as some other foods.
So, on Sept. 13 (2007) there will be a “Spaghetti Strike” in Italy. Nobody will buy or sit down to a restaurant for Spaghetti—or at least that’s the theory.
Eternally Cool, a defunct website, points out that “it’s not just pasta prices that are squeezing Italian budgets, however. Consumer groups are also upset about hikes in the prices of electricity, gas, railway tickets, bread, milk, olive oil, school books, benzine, bank services, and insurance.”
Great. The mismanaged dollar sinks like a rock and Italian prices skyrocket. Nothing like the old one-two punch in the pocketbook.
Nicole Martinelli puts some numbers into the stew: “It’s the most galling in a series of price increases consumer watchdogs reported this fall — Italian families will fork out an estimated extra 1,000 euros this year on food, household items and textbooks — and the only one warranting a day of dissent”
Italians, she points out, “eat slightly more than Paris Hilton’s weight (119 pounds, 54 kilos) in pasta every year.”
Wow.