According to this article in Der Spiegel, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, the finance minister of Italy’s ruling Prodi government, has caused a political scandal over a throw-away reference to the “bamboccioni,” or “big babies,” who live with their parents well into their thirties. Padoa-Schioppa mentioned the bamboccioni in the middle of an Italian Senate hearing over Prodi’s 2008 draft budget. He wants to establish a tax credit for young singles who rent apartments away from home. Der Spiegel reports:
I had two reactions to this piece. First: While the Italian job market is much tighter than America’s (in part because of Italy’s overly powerful trade unions), and Italian economic growth meager at best, there are similarities between the bamboccioni or mammoni and the young Americans in their “odyssey years” about whom David Brooks wrote the other day. And second: Remember Michael Kinsley’s definition of a political gaffe. It’s what happens, he once said, when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
