A country of growing inequality, where the distribution of wealth is highly sensitive to geographical location and class, as well as to gender, age, profession. This is the merciless portrait of a study published by the Bank of Italy, which has bounced around the media like a crazy ball, for one fact above all: in the boot, the ten richest Italians hold wealth equal to three million Italians poorer. A highly synthetic, representative figure, but which does not allow us to address the main causes of the redistributive injustice of the economic system.
In fact, compared to the rest of the developed countries, Italy does not stand out in the ranking of inequality, but a survey by the World Value Survey reveals that Italians consider equity in the distribution of well-being more important than freedom: the result shows how statistics cannot, by themselves, give exhaustive answers. The Gini index (preferred measure of economic inequality), in fact, by returning a "snapshot from above" risks making highly significant and differentiated data homogeneous.
Italy, in fact, if one takes a look at the Gini on income from work, turns out to be a rather fair country. Instead, it is the index that depicts the distribution of property income that gives a less egalitarian image: the well-being of Italians is largely located in positions of income and property assets. Brick and financial assets above all reveal a rift between two macro-sectors of society that have undergone some jolts in the last thirty years.
However, the latter have not rebalanced the scales: if during the ride of share prices in the 90s, the holders of listed assets (mainly wealthy or wealthy families) saw their wealth levitate, the drop in lists over the years 2000 restored brick and mortar supremacy in the representativeness of patrimonial wealth, a supremacy that partially smoothed out the imbalance deriving from success on the stock market.
The middle and lower-middle classes, an example of virtuosity in saving, have historically poured a substantial share of savings into real estate, then finding themselves relatively advantaged after the bursting of the Internet bubble depressed financial markets, historically anemic in Italy. This dynamic is then part of a long journey of growth which has seen the wealth of Italian families increase sevenfold since 1965, albeit with moments of slowdown: the long crisis of the 70s, the four-year period ' 81-'85, the two-year period '93-'94.
The exponential increase in wealth was, notoriously, a consequence of political choices which brought the public debt from the sustainable levels of the early '70s to the current ones: if in 1965 every Italian was burdened with a burden of 2.700 euros, to repay en bloc public debt every Italian should, today, disburse as much as 30.500, including the elderly and infants. It is true that a substantial portion of our debt is held by the citizens themselves, who invested their savings, especially at the turn of the 80s, in public bonds at ever increasing interest rates, often in the double digits.
The effect has been disastrous: especially if observed in retrospect, such high returns have crowded out resources that should have been invested in productive sectors of the economy. Instead, those capitals have contributed to fueling out-of-control public spending, in which local authorities decided on the merits of spending but were not responsible for it, relegating the central government to a role of mere lender of last resort or purveyor of pension income for purely politicians.
It is no coincidence that starting from 1987 the paths of two large social categories began to diverge: that of pensioners and that of low-income families - often working class workers -: while in the twenty years 1987-2008 there was a decrease in the average wealth of working class families, the retired category benefited from a clear improvement in wealth levels.
The study by the Bank of Italy shows, therefore, that the 40% of national wealth, concentrated in the hands of the notorious richest 10% of households, is not the result of a virtuous cycle of capital accumulation which - albeit with growing inequalities – has at least created employment and development. Rather, it is the result of a vicious circle which has diverted productive resources towards positions of income and oligopoly which have made the economic system highly inefficient overall, where the state did not intervene with buffer measures, also outside of a market logic, meritocracy, efficiency.
In this context, the opinion of the Bank of Italy on the wealth taxation measures adopted by the Monti government is positive: it re-establishes the principle that non-productive wealth must be made responsible and pay what Obama defines as the "fair share" of total taxes. In this regard, the reintroduction of the Imu on the first home, the adjustment of the cadastral estimates, the taxation measures on luxury goods and the levy on shielded capital (all measures adopted with the Salva-Italia decree) are considered a point of convergence of a tax system that escapes an ideological and counterproductive demonization of wealth, which could discourage the creation of income and development opportunities.
The institute of Via Nazionale recalls that there remains, in public opinion, a worm, a widespread belief that is difficult to eradicate: that personal commitment and merit play a secondary role in economic and professional success. A triviality now. In the United States, on the contrary, the opinion is reversed: in the common sense, it is precisely the values and individual merits that condition one's career and economic position. If the government of technicians has taken over the reins of the country to correct its accounts, it will certainly not have the time to remedy the cultural flaws and their deep roots. The task will be up to the next governments. Will they be up to it?
Attachments: Bank of Italy inequality.pdf
