I wonder if Giorgia Meloni he was able to use the few days of vacation to clarify some basic ideas on the political and financial strategy to be adopted to change pace in our country, that is, to abandon over a vten years of stagnation and return to growth at least as much as or better than our European partners.
In view of the opening of the discussion on the new finance law between the government parties and between the majority and the opposition, including the trade unions dominated by a Landini particularly active in aiming for more taxes and more subsidies, it would be important for the president to take the time to look at the book that Salvatore Rossi (former general manager of Banca d'Italia and current president Tim) recently published at Il Mulino entitled "Brief story of Italy in the world, through the facts of the economy". It would be better if even his ministers who deal with economics, such as Giorgetti and Urso, dedicated a few hours to reading this agile book which has no explicit political ambitions, but which, by explaining some fundamental figures of our economy in a popular way, ends up giving very clear indications on what should be the priorities to address in order to be able to relocate Italy to a different position in the world, a world that is going through a rapid transformation.
On the other hand, the discussion that is emerging between political and social forces on how the next budget law should be set up seems once again to be based on the same old scheme of who manages to snatch some extra money for their own corporations of reference, perhaps pretending from Brussels a soft stance on the budget deficit. It's a scheme that has already proven to fail.
Budget maneuver: the central problem of our economy is not to reduce the tax burden or reform pensions but to make reforms that increase productivity
The problem for our economy does not lie so much in the immediate reduction of tax burden for workers (which would certainly be useful if done in a context of overall tax reform), or in the pension reform, but it lies in setting up some reforms that allow for a rapid increase in our overall productivity. In other words, the problem of work must not be tackled starting from the minimum wage or from a tax relief on the thirteenth salary, but on a profound change in the system of industrial relations, on the activation of active labor policies to give adequate training to workers leaving obsolete productions, and perhaps to favor, even with some targeted incentives, the meeting between supply and demand.
Contrary to what is maintained by increasingly spectacularized information, Italy is not a country of beggars or poor workers. There are certainly cases of insufficient income, but, as Rossi underlines, our country which is the twenty-fifth in the world by population, is in tenth place by GDP level. We have one balance of payments in profit and we are creditors to the rest of the world. We have very big defects that we haven't been able to attack for a long time. Salvatore Rossi's book mentions six, each of which brings together multiple phenomena. They are all important, but two seem to me fundamental in order to be able to give an immediate signal, already with the next budget law, of a change of pace: it is a matter of ensuring that savers from all over the world (including Italians) can have greater confidence on the future of our country and on government policies. This would lower the interest rates we pay on our debt (at least one point more than Spain), while greater credibility could also increase direct investment from abroad, which sees us at a very low level. And certainly impromptu moves like those of taxing “super profits” of banks certainly does not help to increase investor confidence. To do this it is necessary that the budget law not only respects the European parameters, but also that the expenses are not only gifts to the various customers but serve to modify structural aspects of the system.
The second crucial issue lies in the need to give important signals to increase the size of Italian companies which are too small to be able to face the investments in technological innovations which are continuously investing the most developed systems and at the same time face the problems as protagonists of the global market. A globalization that is changing, but is far from dead and in any case must be supported because the return to protectionist policies within the narrow borders of the old states would be a problem for millions of workers.
Salvatore Rossi, in addition to being a talented economist, has a disclosure vein particularly useful in our country where they say monstrosities on the economy and finance which then lead to wrong policies because instead of attacking the root of the evil they limit themselves to dealing with some symptoms often with little success and in any case further entangling the overall system. In recent times, Meloni seems to be returning to her old statist, corporate and autarchic ideology. Maybe some good reading might give her the courage to do something really innovative.
