Luigi Di Maio never misses an opportunity to announce the introduction of the citizen's income in Italy, even if what he is about to propose is actually a simple unemployment benefit, now renamed insertion income. In the final part of this article I will try to explain the reason for this repeated political deception. For the moment, it is enough to point out that Citizenship income and integration income are not the same thing.
Il CBI, in the words of one of its most authoritative theorists, the Belgian Philippe Van Parijs, it is an "unconditional basic income" guaranteed to all citizens, throughout their lives, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, employed or unemployed", while that of insertion it's a "subsidy" which is given for a fixed time and under certain conditions only to those who are actively looking for a job. Citizenship income therefore pertains to the sphere of wealth redistribution and refers to development policies, while integration income pertains to the fight against unemployment and refers to active employment policies. Di Maio should deal with the latter and leave the arduous problem of creating and distributing wealth to others.
His main proposal at the moment would seem to be that of strengthening of the Employment Centers with an investment of 2 billion euro. But is this really what we need today? According to the latest surveys, the CpIs (which are nothing more than the old dilapidated Employment Offices) have started work no more than 3% of the people who resorted to it. They could certainly do better, but it is unlikely that they could do much more due to the simple fact that they are Public Offices (like the registry office) and that they function as such, i.e. on the basis of a bureaucratic logic made up of regulations, codified procedures and check. They fill out forms, compile lists, assign places in the rankings, verify the existence of the requirements to take advantage of subsidies, but they do not go further because they do not know and cannot.
To help a person find a job, a friendly counter and a subsidy are not enough. Something more is needed. There needs to be someone with competence, professionalism and experience behind the counter. Someone who knows how to evaluate people in order to really help them self-promote and value themselves. Someone who also has effective knowledge of the labor market and its dynamics. This it's not a Public Administration job. It is rather a business job or, at most, an agency, which however is not internal to the PA and is not part of the Public Employment. Agencies of this kind exist throughout Europe and the world but in Italy they have only recently been authorized to operate for the simple fact that only recently and after strenuous resistance has Italy given up defending the taboo of the public monopoly of employment (the intermediation of manpower by private companies was considered in the same way as illegal hiring, i.e. a crime ).
This delay weighs and today of similar private agencies, public or mixed, we really have too few. What you have to do, if you want to give a hand to those looking for a job, is to multiply the number of these agencies by promoting their diffusion throughout the country and if you have to spend money, it is better to give it to workers in the form of vouchers so that they can let them choose who to get help from. Basically, the emphasis should be placed more on the fight against unemployment than on income (temporary) of the unemployed. As Edmund Phelps wrote in his volume Reward Work: “In the fight against unemployment what counts is work, not income. Helping a person find a job is infinitely more important for his human fulfillment than ensuring him a lifelong citizen's income".
And now we come to the point because the 5 Stars keep talking about the basic income despite the concretely made proposals go in the direction of dramatically increasing subsidies but certainly not in that of guaranteeing an income for all citizens. The real reason for this unbearable hypocrisy is that the basic income represents the culmination of the economic theory of Happy Degrowth of which the 5 Stars (Casaleggio and Grillo) are fervent supporters. Degrowth theorists (the real ones, not Maduro or vegan environmentalists) believe that basic income is the right answer to give to two precise facts:
- to the fact that the digital revolution and automation they will destroy far more jobs than they will ever be able to create, thus causing the creation of a huge reserve army destined to live by its wits:
- to the fact that growth (which in any case is neither desirable nor possible since, according to them, development has reached the limit beyond which it would end up eating the Earth), would in any case not be able to create work for everyone.
Hence the need to guarantee all citizens an income sufficient to live in dignity without necessarily having to work. Everyone, if they want, can look for a job, but they can also do other things if the available job is not to their liking.
Professor Von Parijs, who has no shortage of humor, honestly stated that basic income represents “the capitalist road to Communism”, that is, a way to enjoy the benefits promised by Communism (..to each according to his needs and from each according to his possibilities) without necessarily having to suffer the tragic consequences that so many peoples have instead had to experience. The idea is to hold onto capitalism, which up to now has proven to be the only engine capable of creating wealth, while the redistribution of wealth must take place according to the principles (never actually put into practice) of its main enemy, communism. In short, the full barrel and the drunk wife.
For the theorists of basic income, capitalism must therefore continue to function if we do not want the barrack to collapse, but, to this end, it is appropriate to use part of the wealth produced to guarantee everyone an all-encompassing basic income, i.e. eliminate all subsidies, pensions and other forms of assistance intermediated by the state. Citizenship income, according to them, would also two positive side effects: the first is that by reducing the number of people willing to do strenuous and poorly paid jobs, it would stimulate technological innovation and automation and the second is that by putting money in people's pockets, would support consumption.
Apart from the singular convergence with some theses of the Chicago monetarist school, what the basic income theorists do not tell us is what would be the human fate of the unemployed. Do they think that the voluntarily unemployed would spend their time reading or studying, hunting or fishing and doing only the jobs they love to do, as Marx in one of his very rare predictions of the future hoped would happen once the capitalist chains were broken? In reality, none of this would happen, because man, deprived of work, would lose his identity, self-confidence and his own dignity. He would not become a hippy but, in all likelihood, as Huxley prophesied, an "idiot", destined to spend his time in front of a television screen or a playstation. A nightmare, not a utopia, and if any visionary thinks it is a utopia, then it is a reactionary utopia.
