It is difficult to find a definition for the Government maneuver. This is a hail of measures aimed essentially at raising taxes. And I'm not just talking about solidarity contributions (to whom?), but also and above all about cuts in transfers to local authorities, which are given the license to raise their taxes. It is to be sworn that they will do so in order not to suppress services (and not to have to reduce their own expenses), so it is reasonable to expect a sharp increase in the tax burden as early as 2012. Personally I was convinced that it was also necessary to raise taxes to restore the country, in the face of all those who kept repeating the mantra of cutting costs (starting with those of politics). But honestly, I thought it was raining, not that it was supposed to pour!
Unfortunately, the most worrying fact is the lack of lasting interventions (I'm tired of repeating the word structural which no longer means anything). Solidarity contributions are provisional. The cuts to local authorities will be compensated by new taxes, so that public spending will continue to grow. The measures against public employment are one-off. The cut of the provinces and municipalities remains. Correct measure, but which will produce effects far into the future, also because we hastened to remember that they will take effect from the end of the respective legislatures (who knows why tax increases are immediate for us, while cuts in politics must always relate to those who will come after). And then none of us can swear that some province and some municipality will not return to popular acclaim!
There is a certain inventiveness in this maneuver. In particular against the civil service, treated far worse than the tax evaders who are pampered instead. Who knows if it depends on the propensity to vote of these categories (it's a sin to think badly, but you get it right, said Giulio Andreotti). The payment of the severance indemnity is delayed for the public sector and the thirteenth salary is questioned, which becomes a bonus linked to the commitments to contain expenditure. Of course the imagination could have gone even further. One could think of replacing the turnstiles, which allow entry to public offices and which work with magnetic cards, with turnstiles that work with coins: one euro to enter and two euros to leave. Three or four million a day could have been raised. About a billion a year!
And then we could have launched a preventive amnesty limited to those who do not evade taxes. It would have been an operation of equity finally. For example, someone who has never received a tax amnesty could have paid a sum that would have allowed him to evade taxes in the following five years. A sort of securitization of the honest! Thus the number of tax evaders would have increased, which would have guaranteed even more voters to this majority.
Obviously my suggestions are not serious, just as this maneuver is not very serious either. But to carry out a serious manoeuvre, a serious government would also be needed, so we Italians have to wait a little longer. With the hope that the country does not fall sooner.
* President of the University of Trento
