Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Di Maio seems to be truly convinced that the CBI is the most suitable tool for achieving three objectives: combating poverty (indeed, abolishing it!), reducing unemployment and promoting growth. A sort of miraculous elixir, a panacea, similar to the one that Dulcamara, in Donizetti's work of the same name, sold to farmers guaranteeing that it would cure all their ailments. Unfortunately, for him and for us, such elixirs do not exist and things are much more complex than we sometimes tend to believe, wrongly.
Citizenship income is an extremely serious (and even dangerous) thing, both theoretically and practically, and as such it must be addressed. But one thing is certain: its purpose IS NOT the creation of jobs or even the promotion of a more equitable development model.
Its purpose, as the economists of the right and left who propose it affirm, is to support internal consumption and, in this way, to support the economy. In short, it is an anti-cyclical manoeuvre, aimed at halting the fall in demand and preventing the number of people falling below the poverty line from increasing.
If the cause of the crisis is the lack of demand, then the distribution of subsidies can also work (this was what the liberal monetarist Milton Friedman was thinking when he spoke of helicopter money i.e. raining money). But if, as in the case of Italy, the crisis is mainly due to an inadequacy of supply (production base too small, low productivity and lack of public and private productive investments) then retiring people at 62 and distributing subsidies a little here and a little there isn't much use. We need other tools.
In the case of the fight against unemployment the basic income as proposed is not needed. Instead, active labor policies (that is, an efficient governance of the labor market) and incentives for companies to make new hires would be needed. As Nobel laureate E. Phelps warned, if we want to reduce unemployment we must be clear that the main problem “is not income, it is unemployment”.
For Di Maio, however, the opposite seems to be true: first comes the subsidy and then...we'll see. But in the 80s and 90s we experienced many policies that favored the subsidy over credible re-employment paths (and I speak of them from personal experience): from socially useful jobs to the organized unemployed, from cooperatives of former employees to Calabrian and Sicilian foresters up to the box companies of Gepi (forced to hire thousands of workers from companies in crisis with the task of relocating them) and to the Casse Integrazione by way of derogation and which, by way of derogation, could last up to ten years.
The results of these various attempts have been very modest in terms of employment, even if those workers, in one way or another, have been guaranteed an income.
With the Jobs act an attempt was made, albeit with difficulty and with still uncertain results, to take a new road which The government of change is about to abandon. The most serious thing, however, is that with its astonishing promises, the government is re-legitimizing the belief, deeply rooted in the Italian mentality, that the State must guarantee work (isn't that a right?) and that the Centers for employment (very few and not adequately equipped) who would be responsible for making not one but at least three job offers, consistent with the applicant's qualifications and possibly close to home (maximum 50 km). In the meantime, the State should disburse a subsidy of 740 euros which, for a young man who does not live in Milan but in a southern town, are not very few. The fact that that young man must, if required, follow a training course or provide a few hours of socially useful work it doesn't change the substance of things.
Alongside the idea that work is a right that the state must guarantee, the government also fuels nostalgia for the public monopoly of employment. That that monopoly (abolished only in 1997 following a condemnation ruling by the European Court of Justice) created a dual labor market (North and South, guaranteed and precarious) and that it favored the spread of undeclared work and started work only a small fraction of those who resorted to it seem to count for nothing. Feeding this type of convictions and expectations that no one will ever be able to satisfy is not only demagoguery but an act of unforgivable irresponsibility.
This is not the way to go. Employment centres, before being refinanced, should be radically reformed. Today they are branch offices of the Ministry, branches not very different from those of the registry office, which compile rankings and distribute subsidies but which are not equipped to really assist those looking for a job. To be able to do this, these centers would have to leave the perimeter of the PA e become real agencies who do not operate in a market of which they have a monopoly but in a market open to competition, but also to cooperation, between public and private agencies. These public agencies should be able to hire qualified personnel and pay them on the basis of merit and results and the cost of their activity, in case of success, should not weigh only on the State but also on those who use their services (with vouchers, as required by the Jobs act or, as in England, with a part of the first salary).
The state has no duty to find work for its citizens, but has, this Yes!, the duty to help those who are actively looking for that job for the first time or looking for it because they have lost what they had. Employment centers and private employment agencies must provide for this, as is the case in other European countries starting with Germany, whose active labor policies Di Maio says he wants to imitate even if, evidently, he has not understood them well . The basic income which is independent of active labor and development policies and which the government is preparing to introduce does not help to find or create work. An efficient labor market, adequate policies for continuous training and incentives for companies to make new hires, on the other hand, yes.
