What about the reforms? Nobody (or almost) talks about it anymore. They got lost along the way. Berlusconi is betting everything on a reckless fiscal policy to relaunch consumption and turns Germany in arms. Bersani, for his part, is aiming for an increase in public spending to create employment: 7 billion euros for education and healthcare financed with the cut of the F35 (also wanted by the D'Alema government) and with the easing of the stability pact . Only Monti quietly (perhaps too much) reminds us that without structural reforms, which however cost money and are not painless, there is no return to growth and, above all, we do not have the qualifications to convince Europe to change its policy. The truth is that Reforms are our best investment.
That of the labor market, for example, involves investing significant resources in training and in the creation of a dense network of truly efficient employment centres. It also involves the use of tax and social security incentives to encourage the recruitment of young people and women. The same reform of layoffs and the introduction of unemployment benefits for all workers who lose their jobs will also have its costs, if only because it will have to bear the transitional benefit for those workers who, losing their derogation, they could find themselves out of work and without any income, a bit like it was for exodata.
But it is precisely the reform of the labor market launched by Fornero that illustrates very well the difference between unproductive spending (that is, aimed at assistance) and productive spending (that is, aimed at job creation). The Berlusconi government in 2008/9 invested about 8 billion euros in layoffs by way of derogation. A non-repayable investment, purely charitable which no one criticized at the time and which no one ever asked for its revocation. The Fornero reform, on the other hand, goes in the right direction. It reduces expenditure items, eliminates duplication and waste and extends rights to all. As it becomes operational, the reform will make spending more efficient and public investment in this area more productive. If it then succeeds in promoting employment, it will also prove to be much less onerous than the current system. In other words: investing in social safety nets without reforming the labor market is a waste. Instead, putting money to encourage reform is an investment.
The same can be said for school and university. Putting money into this school and this university without starting their reform at the same time would be a waste. Instead, using public resources to finance the costs of the reform would instead be a fundamental investment for the future of the country. The school must be rethought and reorganized by reintroducing merit (for students), quality (for teachers) and efficiency (for individual institutions). The University itself needs to be profoundly changed. The mass university, open to all and not only to the deserving, without selection and without merit and with an unlimited duration, was the dream of 68 which has translated into today's nightmare of a university which does not produce a sufficient number of graduates and which dramatically loses ground against almost all the advanced countries. It is a university that needs to be reformed and the investments must be used to cover the costs of the reform and not to cover the growing costs of a structure that does not work as it should.
Reforms, from school and university reforms to healthcare, public administration and institutions, once implemented, can in turn generate the resources necessary for development. This is how we can grow again: by investing in change and not in the conservation of what already exists. If we carry out reforms in Italy we will also have the qualifications to ask Europe to change.
