We are at the end of the journey. Starting from a reflection on the current crisis, we have tried to explain it first of all to ourselves, and to describe it in a simple and unconventional way. Doubts remain, issues to be explored, unsolved problems. In the great uncertainty we maintain a fixed point: the awareness that today's catastrophe is not only financial, economic or political, but above all cultural. The ideological pendulum which for a long time swung between right and left, generating the excesses of the self-regulated market and the bankruptcy of states, has stopped and there is no point in restarting it. We need new ideas. In search of the lost paradigm, we have observed the world in which we live, finding divided economies and societies, torn by profound inequalities within countries, between countries, between generations. Globalization has improved the standard of living in emerging countries, but has created new weaker groups in advanced countries who are now at risk of returning poverty. The income gap has also widened due to rents and privileges that elites hand down from father to son, hindering social mobility and economic growth. We have accumulated too much "bad cholesterol", too much inequality, too many injustices and tensions on a fault line that threatens social stability even in consolidated democracies.
As Tony Judt says, the world is sick, but we haven't figured out how to cure it yet. Indeed, we run the risk that traditional therapies do not work or even prove to be counterproductive. Some argue that to get out of the crisis we need to grow even faster than before, but in the book we have shown that the self-regulated market and the prevailing incentives in the capitalist system are precisely two of the main causes of the crisis. Others trust in state and political intervention, invoking new taxes, increases in public spending and new laws to redistribute resources in favor of the most disadvantaged. Noble intention, but by now we have understood that public and private failures go hand in hand, just as it is illusory to think that global problems can be tackled and resolved by a policy that is - and remains - above all local. The global economy doesn't have its own electorate and that's why we keep kicking the can in the street, postponing our more serious problems until tomorrow.
At this point in the journey through the crisis, we asked ourselves how this impasse could be tackled. It would make no sense to list the proposals again and subject them to fresh scrutiny. Rather, as we approach the conclusion, we deem it useful to point out the red thread that unites them: that of a just economy, with strong moral intensity, based on economic institutions that aim at growth without excessive inequalities and that recompose the dichotomy between the economic sphere and policy of social progress that caused the catastrophe. This is the meaning of growing together, making an effort to strengthen that essential human bond of justice that the economy has lost.
But what chances of success does the right economy have today? Is it conceivable that a cultural leap will take place that sets aside economic convenience to affirm moral feelings of empathy, solidarity and justice? It is clear that the proposals in this book contain high doses of ethics, idealism and utopia. We see the opposite all around us, as is understandable in the midst of a crisis that scares us and makes us short-sighted and selfish, unable to look beyond the curve of an anguished present.
But something new is smoldering under the ashes. Viacom, the global media conglomerate, has just published a research entitled The New Normal: An Unprecedented Look at Millennials Worldwide. The study reports the results of a global analysis of the behaviors, values and aspirations and perspectives of young people who have come of age in the new millennium. Their answers paint a generation aware of the difficulties of the moment, but optimistic about the future and its own possibilities to change the world. Proud of their roots, but tolerant and open to any kind of diversity, these young people feel part of a global community of which they claim citizenship. Non-revolutionary reformers, they face economic and social problems with pragmatism and without ideologies. They prefer 'we' to 'me', what is right to what is convenient. These are new trends, which mark a strong generational discontinuity. It is certainly too early to tell whether these young people will be the agents of the paradigm shift we hope for, yet the first signs are encouraging. We entrust this message to them.
Erika is an Italian miltennial, Erasmus design student in Lisbon. You send us photos of yourself from a country devastated by the crisis. Some, harsh and anguished, show bloodstains on the pavement after a clash with the police. In others, children fraternize with policemen on the streets. One strikes us: in the foreground the mocking carnival mask of a student, in the background the police lined up, in the background a beautiful pink Lusitanian sky. “This is us who look ahead – comments Erika -, beyond the barriers that separate young and old, united in a common effort, with our eyes turned to a sunset that stands above every cultural, political, economic and social difference”.
