Last night La7 dedicated at least four hours of broadcasting to talking about the privileges of "caste" and this morning the newspapers are full of articles highlighting the defeat of the Monti government on the liberalization of taxis and pharmacies. The impression is that too often we lapse into populism, that people's anger is aroused on secondary objectives after all (and moreover not well examined in their technical substance), distracting attention from the real underlying issues holding back the economy and which have led us to the brink of the abyss.
Caste and the anti-liberalization lobby are two sides of the same coin. And the medallion is constituted by the excessive, and often unhinged, intrusiveness of the State in all sectors of economic life, in the enormous and inefficient intermediation of public money operated by politics, in the patronage management of lobbies and businesses. Reducing the controversies on caste to the salaries or reimbursements of expenses of parliamentarians or regional councilors is misleading as well as painful. The plebeian excitement towards all those who have high incomes, considered tax evaders if in the private sector or despicable profiteers if in the public sector, leads to summary trials in the square, but does not allow us to take a step forward on the rehabilitation of our economic system.
Pointing the finger at the hated taxi drivers or obnoxious pharmacists (by the way, why have we forgotten the notaries this time?) is only a marginal part of the problem of liberalization and the proper functioning of competition. In fact, the main problem lies once again in the public sector and in the thousands of companies controlled by it which operate with favorable regimes and which pass on their higher costs to citizens directly or through taxation. Take, for example, the regional transport sector divided into over 150 small companies and mostly occupied by trumped-up politicians or by relatives of the politicians in office. The Government has increased the petrol to finance these companies and the renewal of the vehicles which are the oldest in Europe. Why didn't you condition the disbursement of these funds on a reorganization of the sector with a drastic reduction in the number of companies in order to achieve cost savings and greater rationality in network management? And what does the union corporation do instead? A nice general strike to reclaim the contract without giving a damn about efficiency. Even Catricalà, who should be an expert, was wrong to embark the Government on measures on taxis, pharmacies and newsstands, which, assuming they can really bring benefits to citizens, are little more than symbolic with respect to the need to eliminate too many Ghinos Heels that Italian consumers will cut off.
In fact, the first problem we have is the cost of the public sector and the companies it controls. The Finmeccanica case is still there fresh to demonstrate what kind of intertwining exists between public companies and their political protectors. And so the recent arrests of the vice president of the Lombardy regional assembly and of various councilors in Calabria, Sicily and many other administrations. In short, for those who make politics, it is not so much the salary that counts, but the business it manages to promote or the benefits it can derive from the protection of this or that lobby. Then maintain a more than decent salary for parliamentarians but reduce their number, abolish the provinces, merge the municipalities and above all oblige all administrations to sell the companies they control, obviously strengthening the powers of direction and control which they must remain in the hands of political authority. Only in this way will it be possible to open the market to wider competition, make the necessary investments in many infrastructures starting with the aqueducts, with effective reductions in the cost of these services.
Eliminating some absurd privileges of parliamentarians such as the so-called annuity is sacrosanct. But it is not with measures of this type that we will solve the problems of lack of growth. Today the League and a large part of the PDL complain about the Monti government maneuver because it is unbalanced on the tax side. They forget that this is the price Italians have to pay because their government has failed in the last three years to cut excess public spending. Let them now propose cuts, privatizations and liberalizations that can quickly allow for a reduction in the tax burden on citizens and businesses, thus promoting a true recovery of the economy.
