This document agreeing to the provisions of Article 2 of the path for the Constituent Congress of the new PD-represents a modest contribution of mine for the preparation of the next PD Congress, avowedly open to input from people outside the party, as I am. A Congress like the one we are about to experience soon requires massive doses of passion, perhaps even partisanship, then planning and expertise, and finally also a lot of constructive spirit. Passion, we need to be able to believe in the change we are calling for, partisanship to make it clear which side we are on, planning to design the future we want, competence to define the goals of our actions, and  an enthusiastic spirit, to not feel defeated by the winners.

 

Congress comes after an electoral defeat evident in its size, clear in its causes. Some will perhaps love to return to refined analyses of the September 25 election result: a perfectly useless exercise. There are many good analyses of the reasons for the PD's defeat, both partisan and independent, both generic and statistically sound. To return to this, would add nothing to the congressional work. And the feeling, moreover confirmed by the ever-present polls, is that the party is further weakening among the electorate. I would summarize things this way: the PD has thunderously lost because too many have done too much wrong and for too long. Among those many are those who left to garner one percent of the electorate or slightly more, those who simply left and pontificate now about how to create a true leftist party, those who stayed but only to stand out and chirp about unlikely alliances for a phantom wide field. Then there are also those who made a lot of mistakes but were sunk, in the end, by friendly fire over a referendum that, in hindsight, was perhaps not all bad. Finally, there are also those who, willingly or unwillingly, used the party as the one-stop streetcar. Keeping in mind the mistakes of the distant or nearer past, however, is not an invitation to open the hunt for those responsible, as perhaps many would like. Rather it is a way of saying that this cannot be a congress to reform the existing, but rather a congress to create a new thing of the Italian left. We have nothing to rebuild on our rubble; we have everything to build on our Vision and our Ideas, assuming there is still a trace of them in us. What we should perhaps do, is to succeed in shaping a New Party, which we might conventionally call  PARTY 5.0, that is, a political party capable of proposing to the country a vision in which the great potential of innovation and technology, that is, the key to access to development, is harnessed to create new values that are widely shared, to generate more well-being for people and communities, to distribute more equitably the material and  intangible wealth created by labour, to protect the environment with greater personal commitment from everyone and more public resources to support it. Instead, it seems to me that many are wrapping themselves in a kind of warm blanket woven of the idea that being in opposition will only do the PD good. I don't know if the good soul of Giulio Andreotti would be of the same opinion, but some doubt is legitimate. Perhaps the PD may benefit from being in the opposition, but I fear that this may cost the country rather dearly. On the other hand, one also has to see how one stands in it, in the opposition, throwing the ball back into the grandstand of maximum ideal systems every time or getting one's hands a little dirty and wringing one's brain a little as well with solid policy ideas, effective legislative initiatives, expendable goals with the target electorate. Moreover, opposition also has to be sold well to the electoral market, and we do not feel that the PD's communication is the best we see around. Not to mention that the PD, in opposition, has also been there quite recently, at least in the 461 days of the Conte I government, without gaining, it seems to me, great results of increased penetration in the electorate. At least, unless one now counts on a much longer duration of the current government, perhaps up to the 1826 days of the 19th Legislature, just to say. I would also point out, in this regard, that there is an emerging tendency to simplistically attribute the recent electoral defeat to the PD's too much sense of responsibility to the country, which has led it to support weak and sloppy government solutions in the face of potential risk of its implosion. Perhaps there is some truth in this thesis, because, in these times, it really is easier to be in opposition than to govern (although it is hard to understand the metamorphosis between the Majoritarian Vocation of some time ago and the retreat to the educational value of being in opposition). However, one should also ask oneself whether really new elections would not have been the right choice or, at least, the least wrong choice, even before and, above all, whether the PD when, in one way or another, it still governed the country, did so well or not. Bad government companies, strange alliances, are never a justification in the eyes of the voter for choices without great and immediate attunement to the country's major demands. I would also add that the PD's desire for opposition should be checked more often with people's concrete sensibilities and modulated accordingly. Perhaps we can explain better with an example. Take the measure on illegal rallies. Too many PD figures have unleashed the usual weapons of fascism and environs. Sure, this government is right-wing with black veins increasingly visible beyond the hiding places. But most Italians probably think it right to prevent Rave Parties, which frequently constitute a kind of free port for behaviour that is not always beyond reproach. Such a measure should be opposed by all means available to the opposition, but not by behaviour that ends up, as it did, turning the party into a supporter of Rave Parties. In other words: opposition is perhaps good medicine, but it is better to follow the instructions in the attached bugiardino! I cannot help but wonder, then, in briefly analyzing some more recent utterances by the PD leadership, whether we are not reasoning too much in terms of catch phrases or somewhat trivial and abstract concepts. Let us take one of the secretary's various speeches (Corriere della Sera, Nov. 10, 2022). I quote verbatim, "The PD is a party. A party that is the property of no one but its members, voters," and, again, "Which parties have recently held or still hold real congresses with leaderships contested by multiple candidates?" and, finally, "We have real internal democracy, that the others do not." All true, perhaps. But it would be a good and fair thing to ask whether changing ten secretaries in fifteen years (from the Veltroni of the majority vocation to the Letta of being in opposition will do us any good) is really a test of democracy and whether it does not suggest any self-criticism that the two longest-serving secretaries, who occupied the top position for 2731 days out of 6850 (forty percent), have both split from the party (Articolo1 and Italia Viva). What real leadership has the party created with this maddening Turnover of secretaries? Surely all this does not expose, rather than spaces of democracy, prairies of unmanageability in a harlequin party, with too many first women, usually first men,  pawing to make themselves had, to create their cordatas, if not their currents, to get to the secretary's chair or close to it. Does the PD really want to disappear because of an excess of formal democracy that actually hides the substantial lack of recognizable and acknowledged leaders? The Congress should also reflect on this issue, which in some ways questions the functioning of the party-organization and how a truly leading class is created and selected.

 

I will now go a little more into the primary reason for this Congress: the founding of a New Party that represents, if it can and should still exist, a modern and attractive left, capable of offering the country a vision of its future based on concrete programs and includes  fundamental short-, medium- and long-term objectives, let us say the milestones of its strategy. Broadly speaking, we should first reflect on what kind of left we want: Utopian and Cooperative (from Saint-Simon to Owen)? Revolutionary and Anti-Capitalist (from Marx to Engels to Trotsky)? Reformist and Progressive (from Tony Blair to Gerard Schroder, from Market Socialism to Social Democracy)? Perhaps, these different souls of the left are variously represented in the PD, which was born from a cold fusion, we must eventually acknowledge, of the two major parties of the Italian twentieth century, whose ideal horizons should perhaps be recovered in a perspective of Reconstruction 5.0 of our country. It becomes important, at this point, to define then a Mission of the New Party that should somehow take shape from this Congress. I take advantage of this consideration to open another brief reflection. It would be nice if we were all convinced that what defines the genome of a party is not the alliances it decides on, but rather the sequence of its founding values, its vision of society, its programs and its actions. True, then there are the electoral traps, like our ROSATELLUM (but Ettore Rosato, wasn't he from the PD? But that law, didn't the PD vote for it? And what did it then do to change it?). Really it would still be a final mockery to split this congress over the choice of alliances, with the perhaps inevitable codazzo of more splits of what little is left. The vocation of the Italian left (and not only the Italian left, to tell the truth) to hurt itself is notorious and has punctuated too many of its congresses, which have often ended up being more cause for political brawl than glue for real unity. What Congress decides is certainly important, but the behaviour of those who will leave here having had their say and voted, whether majority or minority, is no less important. Everyone must row in the same direction, for a party's democracy is respected first and foremost by the acceptance of a defeat of one's own ideas and the contribution one will nevertheless make to the success of others' ideas-a test perhaps too difficult for many, perhaps too many, in this party.

 

I come back to the Mission of the New Party that we should build. For me, the absolute brevity and simplicity of something that would say, "To give concrete implementation to Article Three of the Constitution of the Italian Republic" would be perfectly fine. We all know it and we all know how much visionary, desirable and unfortunately unfinished there is in this dictate of the constituent fathers. Obviously, we should place the identification of the Mission in today's domestic and international framework, in the composite and changing structure of contemporary society, in the space of constraints and opportunities that can be managed with realistically available resources, in the perspective of the not-so-short timeframe of a real path of reconstruction of the country. I think that it will not be the choice of a secretary or an alliance that will allow us to begin our long march with some hope of success, but rather the generous and concordant commitment of all those who can recognize themselves, inside or outside of here, in the new party that should draw itself in this congress. For me, the PARTY 5. 0 that should be given life and vigour should have the goal of creating harmonious development of our community, creating the conditions for growing the economy, reducing inequalities of all kinds, guaranteeing all the fundamental rights of people, with priority given to health, education, work, taking care of the environment in all its forms, the landscape, history, places, and cultures, contribute to the improvement of international relations while maintaining its Atlantic and European location, strengthen the European Union in the achievement of its founding values and goals with more effective, rapid, and flexible mechanisms of governance and operation than at present. I don't know if all this is a dream and if I am aping Martin Luter King, but perhaps we need precisely something like a dream to get out of the nightmare of the definitive disappearance of the governing left in Italy. I say this: let's design a leftist party that is reformist in means and revolutionary in ends. What does that mean? First of all, take note of how and where we stand: in the West, in Europe, in a market economy, in a representative and parliamentary democracy, in a society of Intermediate bodies carrying special interests, in a country of widespread socioeconomic differences between classes and imbalances between territories. All these system coordinates need to be managed, certainly not unhinged, as some would perhaps like to do. Managing them, in a nutshell, means identifying priorities, that is, the logical and consequential order of actions to be taken They will inevitably always be somewhat conflicting, because one cannot expect to resolve without conflict and in a short time the mountain of disorder in our large and tired social, economic and territorial body. Therefore, we talk about  reformism. Simply because I would like to avoid the myth of revolution as a shortcut to change for this Italy, such as it is, in this world, such as it is. For this reason, I think the congress needs to think seriously about the true and deep meaning of the political choice to be made, which is not to indicate a secretary or identify an alliance, but something very different. Forgive me, at this point, the digression on a particular aspect, which I think is pertinent, without any didactic intent. In the English language there are three different terms for politics: Polity, which roughly denotes the institutional political system, that is, how politics works; Politics, which roughly denotes the structure of political competition, that is, the contest for governing power; and Policy, which succinctly denotes what to do and for what purposes, the political solution of problems. I think that, at this time, it is an absolute priority to discuss Policy, because, in the end, it is what contains the material dimension of politics, the goals to be pursued and the solutions to be given to the concrete problems of the country: the only truly visible results of the political actions of a party that has the interests of the community at heart. In Italy today, politics reluctantly deals with collective social and economic problems, preferring ethical ones related to individual values. This happens all over the world, but in Italy this tendency seems to have been accentuated in recent years. Thus, we end up sidestepping the centrality of social and economic issues (which are closely interrelated) in favour of debating issues such as social inclusion or the extension of rights, which are certainly primary issues for politics, but often seem to clash too much with the evidence of homelessness, joblessness and income shortages that plague millions of Italian families.As if it were a flight forward to avoid confronting the harshness and objective difficulty of dealing with those radical social and economic reforms that serve the country's future, but which would inevitably have to touch the interests of many electoral strata of Italy's extensive socio-economic pyramid, well intent on holding on to their privileges, their rents of position and, ultimately, the many gifts that have come to them from years and years of bestowed institutional policies. We should also reflect on the fact that the Western democracies, to which Italy rightfully belongs and we still want to continue to belong, have over the past thirty years progressively created a model of society and economic systems that deserves some critical reflection. This model has been built on at least four basic pillars: the primacy of the individual (which is not the primacy of the person); the primacy of the market (which is not the primacy of competition); the primacy of finance (which is not the market of the economy); and the primacy of globalization (which is not the primacy of free trade). These trends have sanctioned the end of being able to use the traditional forms of the great social struggles of the revolutionary left, first, and the reformist left, later. At this point, we need to resume if not the forms, at least the spirit of those struggles that sought, perhaps even confusedly, to reconcile the values and rights of people and social classes with the solution of the problems of everyday living for everyone and especially the weakest, in particular. In short, let us return to dealing with values and rights, but also with labour, wages, pensions, security, and immigration to be understood as social issues of all.

 

I would now just like to add a few remarks on the subject closest to my study and professional experience, which is economics. We can all agree that without robust economic growth we will never be able to create harmonious development that combines participation, inclusion, and equity. In fact, more generally, a better Italian society will not be able to come into being without an economic reconstruction of the country, which has been stagnant at the pole for almost a quarter of a century. This should be very clear to all social partners: to financial and industrial entrepreneurs of all kinds, to trade unions of all colours, to politicians of all affiliations, to the judiciary, to the bureaucracy, to every segment of this country-machine that has come to a standstill and seems to look only at its own navel and care only for its particular interests. And it should be especially clear to us, who are here in this congress. There is a need for a great sense of concerted action, at all levels. But we need to understand what kind of concertation we are talking about. It is obvious that all intermediate bodies in society, especially employers' and trade union associations, whether representative or not, politically oriented to the left or right, it doesn't matter, will never give up putting the special interests they represent on the table for concertation. Sometimes, however, they should perhaps think a little more about the vast majority of the country, who are not registered to anything, who do not have any membership cards in their pockets, who do not belong to any corporation, who, in the end, are not represented by anyone, not even by the government, which is supposed to do so for the Common Good, this great unknown of Italian politics. What has concertation been reduced to in Italy? Unfortunately, to something very similar to the dividing up of what little there is between the organized powers that are large, but also small and very small, at times and the pressure groups, overt or covert, that revolve around and often within politics. Of all this, the country should unravel, without abortive wishful thinking and boorish protagonism but with the serious personal commitment of an everyday renewed and, perhaps, even less resigned ruling class. I think that a rediscovered left, let's say, could, indeed should, contribute in this direction, which means cutting off at the root the malapianth of the many consociative and collusive behaviours widespread in every piece of Italian society. At this point, I also want to say something about the so-called moral issue, also in the wake of recent events that have, in one way or another, affected the PD. I will try to do so while avoiding the sloppiness of certain readings of facts and the ethical amateurism of too many, but also without excessive intellectual fluttering. In principle, the subject of political ethics, also often referred to by other designations, such as political morality or public ethics, is to make moral judgments about political actions, which is fundamentally different from making moral judgments about personal actions. Moreover, there are at least two different aspects of political ethics. The first aspect is that of political ethics in processes, which concerns the ethics, shall we say, of public servants, politicians in the exercise of their representative function and bureaucrats in the exercise of their administrative function. The second aspect is that of political ethics in actions, of parties and parliaments, for example, that is, in what I called Policy earlier. Although process ethics and action ethics both descend from the basic concepts of moral philosophy and political philosophy, they are very different topics, deserving different analyses, evaluations, and judgements. Indeed, all of us, and the media in particular, commonly deal with the political ethics of processes, which basically implies a moral judgement on people, confusing it with the political ethics of actions, which basically implies a moral judgement on parties. We do not believe this is an unintentional methodological error, but rather a desire to turn everything into a political brawl. The question I am actually asking is this: widespread and recurring incidents of personal bad ethics of party men and area bureaucrats call political parties into question? To what extent? I answer yes and to an important extent. They represent proven evidence of mechanisms for selecting the ruling class that are at least inadequate, to say the least, not to think worse, and of internal party rope-a-dope mechanisms whereby they turn a blind eye, and even two blind eyes, to highly visible behavioural evidence in exchange for evidence of membership, which is just another way of calling it vote-for-trade. On these issues, it seems to me that I have seen too much latitude in the PD's stances, too much hairy garantism, too many metaphorical balancing acts (bad apples, cast the first stone, personal responsibility, and so on). Instead, we should take a good look at ourselves in the mirror and have the strength to see ourselves as we are, even if it is not easy, and then work seriously to be better tomorrow, but without deluding ourselves that we can put our hands on the fire for any of our own. Can ethics be learned? Maybe, but if you have it of your own it is definitely better.

 

I will now spend a few more words and a few more facts to examine some aspects of our economic situation that also take a good picture of the country's various social lacerations. The topic is very broad and cannot be addressed here. I can only highlight two aspects that I believe are top priorities and relate to: growing and increasingly widespread poverty, on the one hand, and increasingly unaffordable and lower paid work, on the other.  These two aspects, in fact, underline a complex web of issues encompassing taxation, vocational training, business competitiveness, stimuli for innovation and development, the quality of relations between the social partners, and numerous others. The economy is a complex system where everything holds together and each weak link propagates waves of crisis in various directions. I should spend a bit of data, but to avoid the boredom of my listeners, I will try to limit myself, pointing out that they are derived from two databases: that of the OECD and that of EUROSTAT, both easily accessible to those who dabble in Facts Check. Right now, Italy is a country with a high level of poverty risk for individuals and households. Our at Risk of Poverty Rate), calculated after social transfers is 20 percent, three percentage points higher than that observed in the EU average (17 percent). The two countries that, because of the size of their economies, are most significantly comparable with us show lower values: 16 percent Germany, 14 percent France. If we had the time and inclination to go down to the territorial level of statistics, we would easily notice the Two Italie’s, for example with about 38 percent of the population at risk of poverty in Sardinia and Campania compared to 12 percent in Lombardy. But that would take us too far. All this, by the way, in a situation of income concentration in which Italy (with an index-quartile at 20 percent of 5.86) is well above the EU average (4.97) and with a higher degree of concentration than observable in Germany (4.88) and France (4.42). Perhaps a little thought in the direction of greater balance in income distribution should be given. Even more worrying, however, perhaps, is the other figure, relating to the risk of poverty among those with jobs: in our country this percentage, less than 9 percent in the EU average, is close to 12 percent. The factors that most influence the growing level of economic hardship of many Italian families are probably two: the scarcity of work and the level of wages. Let's look at the first aspect. In Italy, the activity rate of the economically active population, between the ages of 15 and 64, is a little under 65 percent, compared to 74 percent in the EU average and France and 79 percent in Germany. Let me say one thing right away: it is not that Italians have little desire to work. There are probably three main reasons for this differential. First, the scarcity of labour supply, which discourages many people from seeking it, the rigidity of the labour market, which makes some forms of work difficult to take advantage of even though the percentage of fixed-term and part-time workers does not differ much from that observed in Germany and France. Second, the insufficient endowment of female labour supports, and it is no coincidence that the activity rate of the female population in Italy falls to 55 percent, twenty points below the EU average. For that matter, if we count on the lowest figure of active population in the EU, a circumstance that should contain our unemployment rate, we are primates in this as well: about 10 percent, toward about 8 percent for the EU average and France, not to mention Germany, well below 4 percent. We also hold a solid record in the level of long-term unemployed (over one year). The percentage of the unemployed in Italy who are in this situation is more than 60 percent of the total, compared with less than 50 percent in the EU, 35 percent in Germany and only 30 percent in France. But then there are other rather worrying figures, such as those concerning the youngest segment of the labour force (between 15 and 24 years old), where we are close to 30 percent (one in three) compared to about 17 percent in the EU average (such as France) and the unreachable about 7 percent in Germany. Third, wanting to add a small piece to this bleak picture, it must be added that we also hold the record of young people between the ages of 15 and 29 who are neither employed nor in education or training (Not in Education, Employment or Training, NEET), which are about 23 percent, a full ten points above the EU and French average and fourteen above the German average. Those who like to summarize might say: the Italians who have or are looking for a job are few in number, many of those who are looking for a job cannot find it and if they lose it, they have a hard time finding it again, women and young people are the most marginalized by the labour market. Without feeling sorry for ourselves, all of us adult Italians have contributed abundantly to this disaster, we should recognize that it is not with warm diapers, it is not tomorrow, it is not without touching widespread corporate interests, it is not without sacrifices of the most protected and affluent Social Clusters that we can hope to restore hope to the country. For this reason, we have repeatedly spoken of a real reconstruction of our economy as a prelude to the reconstruction of our society. Let us not deny ourselves some hyperbole: in a scenario thankfully very different from then, we can say, in only representative terms, that we are in a condition if not similar at least vaguely resembling that of the early post-World War II period, without the destruction and heartbreak of then, but with as much to rebuild as then, so as not to miss the train of the future. The second decade of the 21st century has certainly not been a period of economic expansion for the entire EU. From 2010 to 2021 all countries suffered, with very modest growth indices. Against this backdrop, Italy has fared worse than many, remaining virtually at the post, indeed giving up a limited, thankfully -0.02 percent per year of GDP growth. The EU average is a wimpy 0.64% growth per year. Slightly better did France (+1.05%) and Germany (+1.52%). These seem like laughable differences, perhaps economist nit-picking: but, in the end, they mean that our 2021 GDP at constant prices is less than that of 2009, while Germany's, to compare us with those who have run more, is 20% greater. In other words: the differentials of our economic development from that of the other two largest manufacturing countries in the EU are likely to accelerate, and this is not good news either for those who are supposed to create the work, the companies; or for those who are supposed to defend the work, the trade unions; or for those who are supposed to ensure the systemic conditions to make the country competitive, the government. Let us tell the truth here and now. The record, "We are a great country, we will make it," is broken. It doesn't play the right music because of our monstrous public debt, the backwardness of our infrastructure, our logistics systems, our communication networks, the cumbersome complexity of our legislation, the infuriating slowness and vagueness of the justice system, the ethical condescension toward tax evaders-large, small and very small, the pervasiveness and impunity of too many criminal organizations. And then, in the end, we are also a country that softens a little bit of everything: tax evasion, dressed up as a dove, is transformed into fiscal peace; mass building squatting becomes a necessity; the use of cash a sign of freedom and a help to our incapable elderly; and so on.

 

It is worth talking about Italian wages at the end. We know that we are touching on perhaps one of the most controversial topics in the confused Italian political debate. We will try to keep it simple, and for this we will use the latest OECD data (derived from the Tax Wedge Decomposition of the Fiscal Year 2021), which provide a lot of insights on this issue. As usual, I will compare myself with France and Germany, convinced that it is more challenging to look forward than backward. I begin with labour costs, calculated for a single, childless, full-time employed person in the average economy. The annual labour cost figures are these: Germany €64,945, France €544.79, Italy €44,779. So, our labour cost is 31 percent lower than Germany's and 18 percent lower than France's. In theory, one would say this is good news for the employer, but bad news for the worker. The competitive advantage is obvious, if labour costs were really the discriminator of competitiveness, now as in the distant past. But it is not, and Italian entrepreneurs have probably realized this as well, traveling around the world and observing how the Global Value Chain is moving and how the development of the enterprise, and with it, of a whole country is driven primarily by the climb up that chain, rather than just by the cost of labour. I'm afraid I'm getting off track, though. I come back to the cost of labour. Important that we do not take refuge in improper comparisons on labour costs with countries that certainly have much lower labour costs. We, after all, are still in the G7, we are still the eighth largest economy in the world by absolute size of GDP, we are still twelfth in the World Ranking of the largest exporting countries, and so on. We are still a great economy, although perhaps not yet a great economy. Even at the time of the recent budget bill, there was again a discussion about the big defendant of our labour costs, which would be the Tax Wedge, the Tax Wedge, in international statistics. Let's take a look at whether this is true. The average 2021 value of the payroll tax wedge, calculated as a percentage of total labour costs of personal taxes, plus employee social contributions, plus employer social contributions, was 48 percent in Germany, 47 percent in France, and 46.5 percent in Italy. No major gap that would cause people to cry scandal. There is no question that there is a wage problem in Italy, but to put it off to the tax wedge effect is an obvious error in perspective. We have the wrong target, and many indications confirm this. This is well demonstrated by the fact that the tax wedge has, in Germany, France and Italy been stabilized for at least two decades, with limited size variations. Among the three countries, perhaps the biggest difference is on how the burden of the tax wedge is distributed. The employee's share is 65 percent in Germany, 48 percent in Italy and 43 percent in France. In Italy, there is certainly a wage level problem, but it is not by climbing the mirror of the tax wedge that it can be solved. Not least because we have to be clear that we are talking about, on the one hand, personal taxes, that is, state revenue, and, on the other hand, deferred pay in the form of pensions, which the INPS will have to pay, and let's keep our fingers crossed that it succeeds for a long time. And then, let me tell you, there is the obvious evidence of the recent Budget Law, with a few tens of Euros from wedge reduction waved around as the beginning of who knows what. The tax wedge is basically a rather rigid system variable, and the issue of wages should perhaps be taken on the other side of the wire. What perhaps could be done is to create some kind of absolute value threshold of the tax wedge applicable to wages within a certain ceiling. I cannot go into the details of the calculations. I just explain the summary. I started with this assumption: to make the purchasing power of the average Italian wage equal to that of the average French wage, taking into account the different average level of per capita income at equal purchasing power. In addition, I assumed to hold steady the absolute amount of the Italian tax wedge (about €20,800). In the end, labour costs for the employer would rise by less than 4 percent, the net pay check salary would rise by about 9 percent, and the tax wedge would fall by about two and a half percentage points settling at 44 percent. Obviously, the state and INPS would not profit from their respective share of the incremental cost of labour, and entrepreneurs would have to put their hands in their pockets a bit. No pretensions, in this numerical exercise, made on an average value that actually covers the whole range of prevailing wages in the market from the very low to the very high, from those that need to be revalued to those that are still fine even so. I just wanted to say that, perhaps, if we discuss calmly, seriously and with common sense, we can come to mediate on goals, in the end, of common interest. The government certainly cares about improving the living standards of citizens, entrepreneurs certainly care about the convinced cooperation of employees, trade unions certainly care about the competitiveness of enterprises, that is, the condition of their survival and development. Then, perhaps, it might become easier to work on other fronts of the labour market as well: the minimum wage, which must be made but then above all must be rigidly enforced, with widespread controls and very heavy penalties for defaulters; income support, which must exist, but which should only serve to bring back to the community people who are marginalized, unable to work, elderly, lonely and so on; non-employment benefit, from the training wage to income support in job search to unemployment benefits. It is not that we have to invent everything new: we keep the good we have done, if we have done it, modify what there is to modify, learn from those who have done well, and there are many countries in Europe that can teach us something, adapt established experiences of others to our country.

 

Allow me two flashes on two issues that agitate much, in different ways, in politics: citizenship income and Flat Tax, the two trenches Vote-Catchers of the 5 Star Movement and the League. Relative to citizenship income, it has certainly helped alleviate the economic hardship of many people. Nothing has produced in terms of getting them closer to work that they did not have. The only surprising motivation in support of the Hard & Pure citizenship income was found by the Neo-Barricadiero Giuseppe Conte, with the discovery that the fraudulent abuse rate of the instrument, INPS data show, concerns only very modest percentages of recipients. Exactly like saying that Italian tax evasion equals the amounts recovered annually by the Internal Revenue Service. Someone tell this gentleman that he is wrong or lying. Maybe someone from this same congress who is fondling the idea of allying himself with Italy's most unhinged populist political movement, devoid of any cultural and ideal references, even if they do not agree. Let's come to Neo-Libertarian Matteo Salvini's Flat Tax and his successful attempt to introduce it surreptitiously, partially, ramshackle, but blatantly, into the Italian tax system. Needless to remind him that the Flat Tax violates the Constitution. However, the Flat Tax does not exist in any major economy and in any country that has a welfare system that is not unworthy. In Europe, seven countries, small ones, with a very limited level of income per inhabitant and equally limited social spending, apply it. One could speak of countries with no, or almost no, welfare. In the past decade, as many as ten European countries have abandoned the Flat Tax because of serious public finance problems. All relevant studies clearly show that the effect on tax evasion and economic development is negligible, if not negative, as is always the case with the level of social spending. Unfortunately, the flags of the sanctity of the citizenship income and the mirage of the Flat Tax, used in an unscrupulous manner and extent, gain easy acceptance in important parts of the electorate. Politics Grabs -Votes, in short. In this regard, I would like to point out an important aspect that we often forget, or pretend to forget. Any mechanism of economic support to individuals and families, in any possible and desirable form, is fair only if it has behind it an efficient beneficiary recognition system, which means a tight-knit tax system in terms of evasion, avoidance and even disappearance, the unknowns to the IRS. Otherwise, there is a risk of supporting not only the deserving for protection, but also the cunning and crafty ones unfortunately well present in our country. With the risk, among other things, of putting out of play even instruments that could be timely and valuable. For example: the idea of bonuses can also be in some circumstances traversed, but not when it is spread like wildfire, is in no way selective and, finally, reaches the demented one hundred and ten percent (approved by the Conte II government, where it seems to us that the PD also had its hands in the pot). The very idea of citizenship income may make sense, but not to abolish poverty, as someone now quite close to the PD had to say, or to allow greater matching of labour supply and demand through the mediation of often improvised Tutors, blameless for nothing but looking for a job that is not there and perhaps some professional unpreparedness too many.

 

I have really come to the end and I apologize for the length. Perhaps someone will accuse me of not talking about rights, immigration, the Mafia, justice, health care, schools, the environment, and various other relevant issues. My limitation is that I can only talk about the things I know best, which does not necessarily mean well. I know that politics has a very wide scope, but I would not mind if even those who are involved in politics would talk mostly about the things they know and realize that, perhaps, administering a local government, leading a party, governing a country are not exactly the same thing and require different leaderships although of course not incompatible with each other. Being or appearing to be new, then, is no guarantee of success, because very complex problems preclude solutions that are too simple, and newness is sometimes an innovation of registry that does not work.