Free super-free apartments, indemnities on allowances, drivers, superstipendi, golden pensions, "service" maserati and still go-go career shots and millionaire liquidations: the armed forces are a real arsenal of waste and privileges. Just a few days ago we talked about the waste of public money that involves the Italian barracks. Today we will tell you, instead, about what the archaic and non-privileged privileges afford us to the generals.
Yes, because despite the times of austerity and cuts at all levels, the spending review of the armed forces keeps far from touching the benefits of the high military spheres even if calculated according to the logic of the Cold War times. The number of the military is reduced, but the pensions must remain golden as well as the golden handles of the sumptuous representative apartments.
But to better understand what we are talking about, we provide you with some numbers: between Army, Navy and Air Force there are 425 generals for 178 thousand military personnel. In the United States there are 900 but they are leading a sector that, with 1,408,000, is almost ten times the Italian one. To say, we have more generals of Corps, 64, than Corpi d'armata, about thirty. We have arrived at the paradox that the commanders are more than commanded: 94,000 officers and non-commissioned officers, 83,400,000 troops of men and women. In the next two years, civilian and military personnel will be cut by as many as 8,571 units. But the generals no, they do not touch each other.
But now we come to the salaries: a General of the Corps receives an annual salary of 120 thousand euros, about 7 thousand euros a month. Added to this is the right to preferential service accommodation in the best areas of the city, to the mobile phone, in some cases to the driver and to low cost stays in the dozens of defense foresterie, some in prestigious tourist locations such as Bardonecchia or Milan Marittima. And it does not end here because when our general reaches retirement, due to the various allowances of the salary system still in force for the elderly, he finds himself with a monthly higher than the one in service.
If we climb even higher we find instead the SIP, a special retirement allowance reserved, in Italy, only to the Chief of Staff of the Defense, to the three heads of staff of the Army, Air Force and Navy, to the general commander of the Carabinieri and to the Secretary General of Defense. In six, they receive about 2.8 million euros a year. Not to mention, of course, the liquidation of nearly one million euros and the pension of 15 thousand euros net per month. A smaller SIP is mysteriously granted also to the deputy commander of the carabinieri.
It turns out then that the career of the military leadership, and only that, is an unstoppable upward motion. Public administrations are promoted when a place is freed. Under the arms no. Generals are promoted irrespective of the existence of a vacancy. Another gift that has resisted the cuts is the automatic promotion immediately before the leave. On the day before retirement, you go up a grade.
More stars on the shoulder pads, more benefits then. And all this while in Kabul, Italian soldiers, it is no longer allowed to go to eat at the American table, more abundant and expensive.
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