The package, dubbed a "Save Italy" decree by Monti, aims to raise more than 10 billion euros from a new property tax, impose a new tax on luxury items like yachts, raise value added tax, crack down on tax evasion and bring forward measures to increase the pension age.
The measures come before one of the most crucial weeks since the creation of the single currency more than a decade ago, with European leaders due to meet Thursday and Friday in Brussels to try to agree a broader rescue plan for the bloc.
Italy, the euro zone's third-largest economy, has been at the center of the crisis since mid-year, when its borrowing costs began to approach the levels which forced Ireland, Greece and Portugal to seek an international bailout.
Packed into a single emergency decree, the measures take effect immediately, before formal parliamentary approval, but Monti will have to secure the backing of legislators within 60 days for them to remain in force.
This is the equivalent here of raising the Social Security retirement age, adding a national property tax, adding a national sales tax (they have a VAT already but they are raising it), and adding a national luxury tax while going after loopholes and tax evaders. It would be greeted with bloody murder in the street if tried here.
Roughly the US equivalent of $200 billion in tax hikes right there if you figure the Italian amount in dollars and multiply by America's population, five times larger. Oh wait...that's what would happen if Republicans blocked the middle class tax cuts set to expire next year. Every year. For ten years. In fact, that would be a three trillion dollar tax hike on the middle class over a decade. And they'll do that unless they get their permanent tax cuts for the rich.
You don't think austerity is coming to the US? Let the GOP have their way.
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