After months of waiting there is still no decree on basic income and quota 100. From the dignity decree onwards, it seems to have become the fixed figure for this government to throw out provisional drafts to see the effect it has and maybe even get some excessive blunders corrected.
During these months the draft of the citizenship decree has had some marginal improvements, such as that of predicting, for example two distinct access channels: one for the unemployed and one for the poor with the problems of social inclusion, this allows in part to safeguard the Gentiloni government's income for inclusion which is aimed at the poor who deserve attention other than those who are temporarily unemployed and those who work but have low incomes.
Secondly, the hiring of tutors in employment centres (the famous Navigators) are a tangible sign that the rhetoric on the development of employment centers also has some practical significance. And finally the possibility for companies that hire an unemployed person with a citizen's income to have the benefit of the residual citizen's income helps to involve the business world in the operation.
Mind you, these improvements are very marginal because each of these will have significant implementation problems: in any case, it will be necessary to go first to an employment center, therefore the current administration of the inclusion income, which was working well, is disconnected; the recruitment of Navigator is proceeding with fixed-term contracts through Anpal Servizi to overcome the opposition of the regions which, however, will not let it get away with it; potentially very high incentives are given to those who would have taken on different professional profiles in any case, creating distorted incentives for a very significant number of people and companies.
And in any case the problems of substance remain entirely intact and they cannot be improved even if they postpone the decree 10 more times. The first problem is the political message that they wanted to give from the outset: unlike the inclusion income, which is a measure for an audience well limited to the poor, the citizen's income has always been guiltily sold as a potentially extendable measure to all; the fact that in Southern Italy 43% of people declare less than 9.360 euros per year and therefore is a potential beneficiary suggests that this year Italians will focus more on finding ways to meet income parameters rather than finding a job.
This devastating message from the point of view of growth and culture of the country is associated with the other insurmountable limit regarding the implementation of the measure. The implementation phase has always been the weak point of all laws but in this case the correct practical implementation of the measure is (perhaps intentionally) impossible. Indeed the only result we want to achieve is that someone receives money within the European elections.
The decree on citizenship income is written in such a way that first INPS decides on the basis of the ISEE (already today a large number of declarations are not true and, for the occasion, a worsening of the situation is expected) the right to income and then they all start a series of unenforceable formal fulfilments (INPS must respond within 5 days, the CPI must summon you within 30 days. etc.) seasoned with exaggerated (and not credible) penalties in case of false declarations by the beneficiaries.
This is the typical way money is distributed without any conditionality. In fact, it is well known that the only conditionality that can possibly work is not the one with respect to the job offer (which many employment centers will never do) which in any case has formally existed in Italy since 2012 and is not a functioning conditionality even in European countries with a long tradition of active policies but conditionality with respect to activities: i.e the final result of the citizenship income will be to pay 780 euros per month to people who do 8 hours of socially useful work in the Municipality (assuming that the municipalities manage to organize so many socially useful workers).
In conclusion, the only positive side of the basic income is to underline the need to expand the social safety net but this could have been done much better and in a much more effective way by dividing the audiences of interested parties into three separate groupsI poor who deserve an expansion of the REI; the unemployed, who deserve an extension of the subsidy and an improvement in employment services ei low-income workers, which deserve substantial tax discounts to supplement the 80 euros.
