"Chichibio and the crane" is the title of a short story by Boccaccio that tells the story of a servant, Chichibio, tasked with roasting a crane his master has hunted in the Tuscan countryside. Chichibio carries out the order and brings the cooked crane to the table. The smell of the roast and the spices make his mouth water, and he cannot resist the temptation to grab a leg and eat it. When the master sits down to table with the guests, he notices the bird's mutilation; he calls the servant and scolds him. Chichibio does not lose heart and swears he found the crane with only one leg. The master loses patience and, to disprove the servant's alibi, leads him to the body of water where he had captured the crane. When they arrive, they see many cranes resting, perched, as is their custom, on one leg. Chichibio then claims he is right. But the master, to contradict him, lets out a scream that He scares the birds, who take flight, displaying both their limbs. Chichibio, however, is undaunted and, when his master asks him what happened, replies that when he caught the roasted crane, he probably forgot to scream.
It reminded me of this school reading, an all-out display of Claudius Durigon, plenipotentiary of Matteo Salvini in the field of pensionsIn a recent interview, Durigon emulated Chichibio, not with the intent of deceiving his boss, but all Italians. "We are studying a law that will provide consistency to pension spending, because currently it is constructed on a gross basis," the undersecretary declared. What is it about?Pension spending“,” says Durigon, “amounts to approximately 326 billion euros, compared to contribution revenues of approximately 290 billion. But a significant portion of the expenditure immediately returns to the public coffers in the form of taxes. In essence: “Irpef is a round trip item which returns approximately 70 billion to the State".
So—here's the hidden flaw—it would be enough to calculate net spending to demonstrate to Europe and the markets that the budget is close to balanced. There's a problem, however: statistics in Europe—and elsewhere—are compiled based on common, agreed-upon, and predefined criteria. Do we want to avoid what Durigon calls "a revolving door"? But why do it only with pensions and not with public employees' salaries, with contract specifications, and with all the income and cash flows that sooner or later end up under the taxman's thumb?
Furthermore, when you belong to a community that has established its own rules, you can't unilaterally change them or interpret them as you see fit. Do you want to eliminate the income tax for pensioners across Europe? Even in this case, we wouldn't solve the problem of having a higher net expenditure than the equally high net expenditure of EU and OECD countries. But there's one aspect of Chichibio Durigon's reasoning that leaves one astonished: that accounting trick would free up resources to cover a flexible exit plan with a 64-year formula. Obviously, such an operation, increasing expenditure, would require a contribution of new resources, compared to those earmarked to pay pensions today. Even if the two sets—net pension expenditure and tax deduction—were counted separately, the overall amount wouldn't increase by a single euro.
The approximately €70 billion in tax revenue from pensioners is used for more general public spending. These resources, unchanged in their total, cannot be used to finance previous uses and simultaneously meet increased pension expenditures. Like the cranes of Chichibio, which have two legs.
