At a time when public opinion is attracted by announcements of new economic measures (and related corrections in progress) linked to the parliamentary discussion and the approval of the Budget Law for next year, the publication of a volume dedicated to the situation of the Italian Public Finance arrives, more than ever.
The Report, whose first edition dates back to 1994, is curated once again by Giampaolo Arachi and Massimo Baldini, is published by Il Mulino and aims to provide a technical evaluation of the trend of the most important chapters of Italian public spending; also dedicating space to a specific in-depth study and to a new aspect, which will be discussed later.
They flow before the reader's eyes, after a first essay that analyzes the period June 2018 - June 2019 as a whole with a path punctuated by the announcement of expansionary measures except for subsequent course corrections, pages characterized by a scientifically impeccable but easy to understand style, useful for documentation and subsequent reflection, both for "insiders" and for ordinary citizens.
Thus, one can recall the essays dedicated, on the one hand, to an evaluation of the Italian tax system, where it emerges a situation of almost residual income tax, increasingly characterized by being a "type tax" and by a tax system that seems to be oriented towards the area of special taxes; on the other hand, to the analysis of the tax administration with a view to its possible efficiency, while taking into account the inevitable conditions deriving from compliance with the rules of privacy, as in the case of the register of patrimonial relationships.
Two other essays are then dedicated, respectively, to public services as a whole, where the related policy is bitterly labeled by referrals that distinguish it and to health care, another area in which the promises of intervention measures have difficulty following concrete facts.
Similar negative considerations derive from reading the pages dedicated to infrastructure policy, with public spending destined for it appearing to be further sacrificed compared to the already unsatisfactory levels of the recent past; as, unfortunately, happens for the resources to be spent on the human capital of the school world. And this, despite the fact that these are two essential chapters to accompany and support the future development of the nation.
Finally, there is no shortage of analyzes on the subject of assistance policies, in particular on the measurement of the citizen's income and its effects, as well as the interventions carried out in the field of public pensions, with a specific attention to the so-called quota 100.
As for the in-depth study and the novelty contained in this Report, to which reference was made before, a quick nod. The in-depth study of 2019 is dedicated to a theme that is not yet the subject of public debate, but it is also destined to become central to the demographic dynamics that is characterizing Italy: assistance to non self-sufficient people and the correlated aspects of social welfare services and the carer's allowance with its function of income support.
The novelty is the chapter dedicated to debate on differentiated autonomy, i.e. the activation of further forms of autonomy pursuant to article 116 of the Constitutional Charter, following the requests made by three Regions, Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia Romagna. A particularly delicate topic that can be read both in terms of opportunities for rationalizing public intervention; and in that of the possible problems in the functionality of the financial relations between different levels of government with possible risks of stability for the public finance.
