How unions and businesses can improve the government’s economic maneuver
Unsolicited advice to government, unions and businesses on the measure. The speech by Paolo Pirani, Cnel councilor
“Ten thousand difficulties do not create a single doubt” claimed Isaac Newton. And in today's troubled world, do not neglect doubt, it could even become a sort of compass in the midst of difficulties. The inevitable question that arises as we witness the conflict in the Middle East after Ukraine is even obvious: are we equipped to deal with disturbing scenarios in the long term, at least on an economic and social level?
In reality, reading the comments of some financial analysts we might get the impression that the war mitigates the risk Italy was resurging. In the current situation, Europe and the markets certainly cannot add to the uncertainties of the moment which are clearly visible in the behavior of investors and savers (who are less and less so…) also the problem of a country like Italy which is starting, with the debt it has, towards a worse consideration of its securities than the present one with the result of being more profitable than the Greek ones at the moment, but with the risk of approaching the frontier of those defined as "junk". And the spread rises…
In short, from these considerations one could deduce that the war… helps Italy to stay afloat, a precarious fate equidistant between reality and illusion.
The fact is that beyond the evaluations of the actions and maneuvers of the Meloni government, one has the impression that navigating international storms by sight justifies the lack of a strategy that can somehow prevent the veil of war from being lifted, hope to be preserved in any case, Italy returns to being a country held hostage by Brussels and the markets, showing all its fragilities.
The economic maneuver in this sense makes it clear that we are far from behavior capable of withstanding the adversities we face.
The Meloni Government uses the deficit once again to sprinkle a bit of money in the future into an economic and social reality that needs much more, while an organic counter-proposal from the opposition is delayed and the unions are trying to put their finger on the wound in a context in which the desire for real confrontation is guiltily absent.
The maneuver seems to have above all a political meaning: not to lose consensus in 2024 in view of the European elections. But in doing so they close their eyes to the adversities they will have to face, preferring to silence some of the needs of their electorate.
It could turn out to be a very serious miscalculation.
And it is not a problem of available resources, which are certainly limited. One example among many: the recent Uil document on the crux of the maneuver recalls that "an industrial strategy that establishes the assets from which to start again is still unknown, while other countries such as France, Germany and Spain have developed industrial plans and are investing dozens of billions for industry and job creation.” This is an inaction on the part of the Meloni government which we could pay dearly for in the future and which certainly will not be filled by the symbolic incentive provided for bringing back some productions from abroad.
We could continue with the state of public health, with the underlying wink to Brussels on interventions relating to social security as if they were an expression of the desire to show a certain, useless, rigor, with the salary question and the renewals of contracts starting from those of the public sector. And even more so, tax equity which continues to be the terrain of statements of principle without coherent follow-up. Upon closer inspection, these are short-lived interventions but without the most important content: a vision of perspective that is not limited to the search for resources but expresses the search for real change.
Le Monde, obviously not a "friend" of the Italian political situation, reports that with the maneuver the government would give up "any debt reduction". It is very likely that investors will ignore these "rulings" and our rating will not suffer even more negative shocks. But this eventuality cannot make one sleep peacefully, especially in a country that has a debt of over 2,800 billion euros (in an international scenario in which the debt is now as much as 336% of world GDP), an inflation which, above all for the shopping cart is struggling to decrease, a conduct of the monetary policy of the central banks that concern us, the Fed and the ECB, which makes debt control more onerous.
We are well beyond the need to propose a short-term economic and financial policy, when it would be a question of thinking much more deeply about what must and will be done.
In this situation social forces can truly be protagonists. The trade union organizations with a common work could not only favor a substantial improvement of the objectives of the maneuver but also help to make it clear that to overcome this crossing in the desert not only resources but ideas are needed… Those, to be clear, which are missing in today's political confrontation , once again, marked by all too easy opposing slogans.
However, entrepreneurial forces would be making a mistake if they relied on the crumbs provided by the government to move forward. Even from them it would be important to give a boost as happened in turning points in the history of our country and which is not felt now.
Ultimately, it would be very useful to restart the ability to plan, even in difficult situations, that ability to reassure and recreate reasons for hope. And don't leave the task of postponing problems to the theaters of war.
Paolo Pirani
CNEL Councilor
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/come-sindacati-e-imprese-possono-migliorare-la-manovra-economica-del-governo/ on Fri, 20 Oct 2023 12:19:29 +0000.