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The author of this publication is Costantino Ferrara, vice president of the section of the Fiscal Commission of Frosinone, former honorary judge of the Court of Latina, president of the Association of Fiscal Magistrates of the Province of Frosinone –
Having to deal with a pandemic economic crisis like the one underway puts the executive of each country involved in the uncomfortable position of making difficult, sometimes unpopular, sometimes even risky decisions. It is a question, broadly speaking, of deciding how to use the available resources, in a situation of “scarcity” of them, in such a way that at least the survival of the productive apparatus is guaranteed until the moment the crisis ends.
In such a context, completely renewed compared to the pre-existing economic paradigm, it no longer makes sense, at least in the writer’s opinion, to insist on the income of citizenship, a measure strongly desired by the 5 Star Movement, then implemented in the period of government in coexistence with the League.
I can think of (at least) 5 reasons why citizenship income should be abolished.
1) It did not produce results in the world of work
In the first place, the measure did not produce the desired results, in terms of determining the reintegration of the recipients in the world of work. The failure of the navigators is a clear demonstration of this. Far from being a mere “welfare” provision, the citizen’s income was presented as the tool to revolutionize the world of work. The data, almost two years after its introduction, shows the opposite, given that of the approximately 3 million wage earners, more than 90% of them have not even touched a job, rejecting the proposals (or not receiving them at all).
Not to mention, then, the abuses that occurred punctually, even with money, sometimes ended up in the hands of real criminals, recognized as such by the justice. We could and should have done much better from this point of view, with ex ante and ex post verifications, perhaps asking at least that the trustee be in place with the criminal record, asking him to present a certificate of pending charges.
2) It has a huge cost
The second aspect, obviously correlated with the scarcity of the results obtained, is the weight of the measure. Citizen revenue comes at a huge cost to the state coffers, a primary impact expense. So far the estimates speak of about 9,000 million of spending, predicting that in the next three years the spending to finance the measure will exceed 20,000 million euros. It goes without saying that the resources saved by its abolition would be decisive in the country’s reboot plan.
3) Support is needed elsewhere
Citizen income, in addition to its function of “reintegration” into the world of work (bankruptcy aspect, as already mentioned), is a measure of support for the weakest sectors of the population (despite the abuses that many times have destined to other shores), due to lack of economic resources.
The emergency of the coronavirus, however, has created new categories of “needy”, subverting the order of priorities for the destination of the assistance measures. To date, in fact, it is the companies that need a substantial reinsertion of resources, which have failed due to the closures and compression suffered by the different activities. In this case, the support measures also serve to preserve the survival of the system that revolves around the company, even before its owner. That is, around a company that runs the risk of closing due to the pandemic, employees who will no longer have jobs, suppliers who will no longer be paid, owners who will not collect rents, etc. gravitate.
The business crisis cascades over the entire reference context, with devastating effects. Therefore, in the understanding that even citizens’ income recipients (legitimate, not usurpers) are categories of “needy”, they have been joined by others, whose non-compliance would be very serious not only for the only needy (field to protect absolutely), but to all the people who depend, directly or indirectly, on the business system.
The discourse is simple: in a physiological context of scarce resources, the choice of how to allocate them must respond to priorities that, in the new economic paradigm, have changed and anachronistic the measurement of citizen income.
4) It does not act against undeclared work and “encourages” unemployment
These profiles, connected in certain respects, are also well known. There are very common situations in which the beneficiaries of the citizenship income simultaneously carry out undeclared jobs in order not to lose the subsidy. The damage is twofold, because on the one hand the subsidy ends up in the wrong direction, on the other hand illegal work steals additional resources from the state coffers. In addition to the salaried employees who perform other work, then, there are those who, precisely by virtue of receiving the monthly check, do not seek work at all and / or reject it in the case of proposals that are not considered “convenient”. Furthermore, this is an aspect that generally refers to income support measures: therefore, the mechanism should work in such a way as to avoid these distortions. But this is not the case, and this is a sad fact.
5) The failure of the elections
One last reason, which I feel I have to highlight, is the results at the polls of the party that has made the measures one of its banners, in addition to having implemented it in practice.
Among the detractors of the income of citizenship, it was common to criticize the measure as a movement of political demagoguery, to monopolize votes. In other words, a kind of electoral “tip”, in the belief that the beneficiaries of the subsidy would have “corresponded” (the term is granted) with political support. However, this aspect has also been denied. The consensus for the political force in question has been drastically reduced, both in current polls and in past votes. In other words, the measure did not bring benefits even to those who had implemented it.
