"We need to reevaluate the role of the state while retaining all the characteristics of a democracy based on a market economy, according to liberal principles”. This is the pivot around which revolves the recipe for a better future contained in the new book by Innocenzo Cipolletta "The new normality" just released by Laterza Publishers.
Cipolletta is an economist, but also a manager with extensive experience in leading private and public companies, which he is not satisfied with common feeling, but is always looking for new ways to get out of the banality of ideological and non-ideological recipes based on careful observation of reality without blinders. In this latest work of his there is an effort to arrange all the aspects of an overall recipe that would allow the world to manage with caution the uncertainties that arise from unpredictable events, but of this magnitude the disruption of people's lives and the economic and pre-existing societies.
The COVID-19 pandemic is just the latest of these critical events that have changed what seemed to be humanity's smooth marching path. Only in the last twenty years, for example, has there been the crisis due to the demolition of the twin towers in New York, the financial crisis of 2008-2009, and then that of sovereign debts together with the wars in the Far and Near East, for end up with the blow of the health crisis that has disrupted the lives of millions of people causing a drop in income of an amount similar, if not greater, to that of a war. Such a close succession of events of exceptional significance naturally causes uncertainty and fear in citizens and therefore a request for reassurance to the authority which, despite the ailments, remains the state one, closer and equipped with the necessary tools to intervene.
Hence the first risk: that of trade for greater security (more presumed than real) with a decrease in the rate of democracy, in short with the acceptance of authoritarian if not really dictatorial regimes. After all, the idea that democracies are not efficient and rapid enough to deal with a succession of crises such as those that are affecting the whole world at a rapid pace is not new, indeed it is a constant of every era. In the 30s, for example, as Paolo Mieli reports in his new book "Fascism", Lord Arthur Ponsonby, Labor leader in the Upper House, wrote: "We secretly envy the methods of the dictatorship when we see how energetically it works elsewhere". But Cipolletta demonstrates that this is a fallacious belief. It is not true that authoritarian regimes can succeed in truly innovating society and the economy to enable them to withstand adversity, because "every true innovation is subversive and therefore ends up subverting the hierarchies - of values, of people, of institutions – existing”. Which dictatorships certainly don't want.
On the other hand, the belief that in many areas of the planet people's lives had moved towards one steady and steady growth, was perhaps born after the Second World War, but it has never been true both in ancient history and in recent decades. Here then is that you need to equip yourself to face the unexpected and Cipolletta, with a good dose of reasoned optimism, explains how it can be done. There are two strong points in the overall picture of him. On the one hand Europe and on the other the nation states.
Europe must proceed with greater courage towards federal integration with a larger common budget and a more integrated foreign and defense policy. What matters is that Europe changes its approach to economic policy: no longer a policy that entrusts its development capabilities to exports, but focuses on internal demand as a driver of growth, as indeed happens in the United States where the foreign trade has a rather limited impact on GDP dynamics. And then an area like the euro with about 350 million inhabitants with a rather high per capita income, how can it expect to live on exports, maintaining a strong surplus in its trade balance and therefore not helping the growth of the rest of the world? But a politically relevant point needs to be clarified: a confederal Europe, as the right would like (Le Pen and Meloni), would make it impossible to create common levels of government, and therefore, in fact, would nullify any possibility of progress towards a more unitary and more efficient.
But where Cipolletta's thought operates a real reversal with respect to the doctrine and practice of recent decades, it is in the new vision of the role of the state. No longer a beast to starve with tax cuts to reduce waste and public sector mismanagement, but a new enhancement of public services, on the subject of school, health, welfare, as well as obviously the classic ones, such as defense, justice, security. This can be done not by indiscriminately increasing the presence of the public sector in the economy, but by aiming at a higher "quality" of public intervention.
But this is precisely the challenge that has sometimes been attempted in the past but which has never had positive results. It is true that inequalities cannot be fought only with progressive income taxation, but that they can be mitigated more effectively with the provision of good public services to all. And it is also true that if a country can have good collective services, it can also not be afraid of fair taxation. Taxes may not be "beautiful", but if they improve the quality of life in common, then the social pact that unites citizens can be strengthened. But how to succeed make the state work well, both in its political and bureaucratic articulations?
Cipolletta is a bit allergic to the term reforms, which in fact he hardly ever mentions. Yet neo-liberal ideas were born precisely from the observation that excess regulation and high taxation were progressively plastering the market and therefore hindering innovations and growth, as well as leading to high inflation. Now the return of the state is there for all to see. But to do what? It does not seem that, at least in Italy, our politicians have learned the lessons of the past, on the contrary it seems that they want to follow in the footsteps of the 30s with the creation of a strong public industry and deficit spending on unmotivated gifts (think of 100 or to the eternal redundancy fund). The improvement of services, then, will not be as long as the current one remains pulverization of powers between the State and the Regions. Think of Healthcare, but also of the labor market for which active policies would be necessary which are not implemented due to the joint opposition of trade unions (linked to the defense of the current position) and of the Regions which manage a training system in a patronage way (which forms well little).
Good crises should not be wasted. Cipolletta argues that in times of crisis corporate resistance to innovations and changes diminishes. The Draghi experiment it is in fact demonstrating that many things can be done, or at least started. And yet there will always be the need to have some political forces of sincere liberal-democratic inspiration who can arouse the consensus necessary to complete in a few years that renewal of both the public sector and the private market so as to make them collaborate to ensure a high satisfaction of the citizens, with maximum efficiency in management. It is not a dream, but a real possibility if we are able to look at our future in a positive and reasonable way.
