References to current economic situation have a singular analogy with the considerations from which it started in 1962 the additional Note that my father drafted as Minister of the Budget of the Fanfani government which paved the way for the formation of the first organic centre-left government.
“The Italian economy – it read at the beginning of that document – was characterized, even in 1961, by the persistence of a very high rate of growth, with an even higher rate than in previous years.” And yet – he added – “the considerable capacity for growth demonstrated by the Italian economy does not allow us to portray our further economic development as an automatic movement destined to continue, without repercussions which may also endanger some results recently achieved. The economic policy must therefore take charge of the preparation of all those means a stabilize the development process. "
To this end - the Note read - they were indispensable profound processes of productive transformation to create new orders of convenience for private investment and all this had to be accompanied by an increase in the availability of public goods and collective services, which had been very scarce until then. In this context, it was also a question of pushing towards a rebalancing between the more advanced areas and the depressed areas of our country. The alternative to this conscious policy was to entrust oneself to the market, knowing however – the Note reads – that the unresolved contradictions would soon block that development process.
In reality this is what happened from the XNUMXs onwards, precisely because it was not possible then, and it has not been possible since then to create the conditions that would make that development process stable.
This is not the place to dwell on the causes of that failure. What I want to emphasize is that today's situation has a strong analogy with that moment. Today we are crossing a phase of economic recovery that was in many ways unexpected. It is a completely new situation compared to the recent and less recent past. Critics point out that this is only a recovery compared to 2019 income levels and that our per capita income is still below 2007 levels. That is correct, but I observe that even in the 50s levels began to recover of the productive activity of 1938-39. It was the continuity of that pace of development beyond pre-war levels that was the economic miracle.
Today's problem is exactly the same as it was then: we need to give the recovery strength and continuity over time. To this end, it is necessary to set up and conduct for the necessary time an economic policy capable of ensuring these results. They serve investments in infrastructure. They are needed investments in the supply of collective goods, kindergartens, schools, universities, health care and, at the same time, we must proceed to ecological and information transformation of the private and public production system. To do all this we need to mobilize the public investments far beyond the levels of recent years, but it is necessary to ensure that they are accompanied by private investments, a considerable amount of private investments with Italian and foreign capital.
For the public component, part of the means can come from Europe with the Next Generation EU, but to ensure them we have to carry out the reforms and implement the projects on schedule. Alongside the European funds, funds recovered from the state budget will be needed, but this requires great severity in current spending; what is needed is an austerity in spending in this year's budget and in the next ones without which the project becomes unsustainable. Finally they serve investments by Italian and foreign private companies. We need to know that they can be recalled, but for this a stable, reliable and lasting political framework is essential.
This is what Italy needs today: these are not one-off things to be insured: we need political and economic policy continuity for the necessary time, which is not measured in days or months, but in years. We are therefore at a turning point in our history in many respects similar to that of 1962. At that time the ruling class went bankrupt, but we had accumulated margins. In particular, we didn't have a public debt problem because wartime inflation had wiped it out. Today we have no margins: public debt, which did not matter then, weighs heavily today and can choke the recovery at any moment.
Whom to entrust these tasks that if we don't want to define enormous we must at least call them very demanding? In June 1944, traveling by ship to the United States, where the Bretton Woods conference was to take place, John Maynard Keynes read a newly released book by Friedrich von Hayek, The road to slavery, the manifesto of liberal individualism which saw and sees the risk of loss of freedom in the growth of the public sector. It was in a sense the polemical response to General theory, which had instead provided the theoretical justification for public intervention.
Keynes' reaction to reading the book was surprising. He didn't argue with Hayek. He wrote him a letter saying he totally agreed with him; on the contrary, he said he was moved when he read the book. However, he added that, as Hayek himself acknowledged, there are things like justice or defense that the state must do. The question could not therefore be resolved in the abstract, but in the concrete situations and needs of the time. I - wrote Keynes - think that the State has absolutely relevant tasks to carry out and must do much more than it does today, but the guarantee of freedom is to entrust this task to someone who has a clear sense of the necessity but also of the dangers of this setting. Necessary public intervention, but rigor in examining expenditure: the ability to distinguish – we would say today – between good debt and bad debt.
Mr President of the Republic, Mr Prime Minister, Italy is experiencing a vigorous economic recovery for the first time after the anguished months of Covid and after years of stunted growth. You may have the hope of resume a path of economic and social development that has been interrupted for too long and whose interruption has widened poverty and inequalities and fueled a serious social and political malaise. Can those conditions come true today which, on the other hand, did not materialize in 1962? At the end of this day, allow me to wish all of us, but above all Italy, that the architects of this condition, the architects of this turning point, will be given all the time necessary to ensure that this recovery really is, not a passing flame, but the possible beginning of a second economic miracle in the country.
