Inflation spectrum
Federico Guiglia's notebook
It is an invisible tax, and perhaps for this reason no party is asking for it to be cut. Yet, it affects everyone, and by hitting everyone it damages especially the weakest. It is called “inflation” and in the month of October alone, according to Istat, it recorded an increase of 3.5 per cent on a monthly basis and of 11.9 per cent on an annual basis.
It had not happened for 40 years, and that is enough to sound the red alert to the new government, called not only to face the expensive energy with energy, but also to intervene immediately with measures capable of stopping the price rush and what is needed. , today, to citizens in daily life. Than it even takes to build a future, as happens to young people and couples struggling with higher mortgages and loans. Shopping or asking for money in the bank, vegetables or the dream of a house: everything has become more expensive and therefore difficult.
But there is little consolation in attributing the blame for the submerged tax to the increase in energy goods caused by an unfortunate war. Because the trend also drags food with it. It means a lighter shopping cart, and at the same time a compression in the savings of Italians, which has always represented, together with the ownership of a house, the bulwark of the family economy.
The trade associations calculate that an average family will have to spend more than 4 thousand euros in a year on the wave of generalized and indiscriminate increases. As well as the gains of speculation, which in crises finds its ideal opening to step forward: this is why government action, including supervisory action, is essential to tackle the sting already in full force, with the leap in basic necessities. .
The decrease in purchasing power is, therefore, a full-blown emergency, and the conditioned reflex reaction – the tightening of the belt of individuals and society as a whole – is not enough to deal with it. Majority and opposition, employers and trade unions, responsible institutions and economists are all bound to a great effort of national responsibility. Because the tax that is not seen, is actually heard, and it hurts terribly. And then it feeds social unease, the protest of those who can't make it.
An impoverished Italy, an economy subject to the worm of inflation, essentially less income for everyone means nullifying the resources and commitment destined for recovery and relaunch.
(Published in The Arena of Verona, Il Giornale di Vicenza and Bresciaoggi)
www.federicoguiglia.com
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/spettro-inflazione/ on Tue, 01 Nov 2022 07:21:49 +0000.