Luca Paolazzi, the director of the Confindustria Study Center, opening the conference of industrialists in Milan, responded very effectively to the growing ranks of those who, more or less explicitly, are distancing themselves from the provisions that the Monti government is launching, affirming that they are only recessive and that there is nothing conducive to growth and job creation. There are more and more people who say that "much more" would be what needs to be done to really create new jobs. Most do so to try and reject the reforms that affect them. Others, but they are a minority, to ask for even more incisive measures. Overall, this party of "benaltristi" in which the politicians of the previous season militate in search of revenge, but also some prominent scholars such as Giuliano Amato and the Prosecutor Scarpinato, in fact spreads a climate of distrust which certainly does not facilitate a more aware vision of the future of this country.
Luca Paolazzi indirectly replied to all by stating that reforms are the only way to get Italy out of stagnation, that they must be pursued quickly but then maintained for an adequate time without that continuous back and forth that has often characterized the of our politicians and that they must aim primarily at changing the behavior of all Italians, encouraging them to work harder, better, and longer. Of course, every reform also serves to modify the public finance framework or to change the economic accounts of this or that sector. But it is even more important that they, all together, make it possible to break the cast in which the country is now a prisoner and which prevents it not only from running but even from walking. Paolazzi demonstrates that only a patient and constant work of reforms will allow Italy to reach growth rates above 2% in the space of a few years, while there are no shortcuts, least of all if they are based on an expansion of public spending.
Going even a little outside the traditional analysis of the Centro Studi, Paolazzi said that the Italian crisis is due to a bankruptcy of the State and certainly not to the market bankruptcy (and so Tremonti was fixed), which for many years spent too much, badly, and with patronage motivations, thus wasting resources that could have been used by the market with far greater efficiency. The problem now is political, even before economic. For too many years we have incorporated due viruses that have made us lose competitiveness due to the mismanagement of politics and the inability to introduce changes at the right time and with the necessary consistency.
Surely Monti didn't do everything that would have been appropriate. However, he laid the foundations for a profound change in the attitude of Italians towards work and towards the community. This is passing through a phase of greater sacrifices, including of a fiscal nature, but it is a much more modest and short-lived setback, the more rapidly the organization of the Italian economic system will change, also due to the abolition of the many corporate privileges or so many monopolies that impose extra costs on citizens and businesses. After the liberalisations, the reform of the labor market is a fundamental step in trying to improve the productivity of our economy. And we cannot go on with the formulas of the past, such as those evoked by the mayor of Milan, Pisapia, according to which certain rules such as article 18 must be maintained (perhaps by adapting them a little) to safeguard social cohesion, when the The general impoverishment of the country demonstrates that such rules no longer protect anyone except a small group of the privileged and certainly do not safeguard the cohesion of society.
What Monti hasn't touched yet, apart from pensions, is the public sector understood not only as the privileges of caste, but more generally as the way politics operates, the institutional system of vetoes among the many and confused levels of skills, corruption which overall distort the markets and prevent normal economic and social dynamics. The examples are numerous and range from the bureaucracy that prevents a normal expansion of an industrial warehouse, to the impossibility of carrying out a rational (and also economically convenient) management of waste, to public works subjected to such a mass of regulations that vary over time as to keep away many potential private investors, ending up with the management of the Public Administration which is not based on the evaluation of results but on the formalities of administrative law, and the school and university system where we have been falling back for years and where real business opportunities such as the establishment of courses for foreign students also willing to pay high fees.
Naturally, the parties tend to consider the Monti government as a parenthesis and are preparing to return to power in 2013. But with what program? It would be a catastrophe if they thought of starting over as before to spend tax money to strengthen their consensus, or worse to favor the business of friendly cliques. The reforms that the country needs are many. All aspects of civil and economic life must be touched. It takes a medium-term perspective and a strong conviction and will to reform. And in the first place, if the parties want to get back in the esteem of the Italians, they must demonstrate that they have broken all ties with the patronage and fraudulent way in which they have so far administered the State and above all the local authorities, as testified by the investigations by the Judiciary that every day newspapers tell us. It is on this type of change in the political offer that Italians will be called to choose their governors next year.
