In La Repubblica, the economists Tito Boeri and Roberto Perotti have once again drawn attention to a disaster that few have wanted to denounce: that of the Pnrr. Ultimately, their analysis highlights that the pandemic was, for our country, the opportunity for a further expansion of spending: with the result that the money coming from Brussels aggravated an already very difficult debt situation.
The article highlights how the Giallorossi government, led by Giuseppe Conte (in the photo), has raised cash more than any other not on the basis of real needs (assuming that there are good reasons for the public debt, thanks to which anyone spends by borrowing someone else), but instead deluding themselves that that aid was at no cost. In a crazy climate linked to the health emergency, in Rome it was thought that what was previously not possible had suddenly become permissible and even necessary. If we consider that the super bonus was being put in place at the same time, the result is that “in the space of a year, between May 2020 and April 2021, we therefore found ourselves with two additional public spending programs of at least 420 billion”: an authentic monstrosity .
In terms of maintaining public accounts, the devastation is evident, even if some self-styled theorist of the so-called MMT (Modern Monetary Theory, ed.) will perhaps tell us that debt is never a problem, because for every indebtedness there corresponds a credit (with the « small” problem that it is not at all certain that the two subjects are the same). However, there is another and even more serious question.
The “statist pandemic”, as it was baptized by the few who tried to counteract that interventionist delirium, represented an emergency within the emergency: the real or presumed “state of necessity” linked to Covid-19 paved the way for exceptional decisions and often completely irrational. This, however, has had a profound impact on the Italian economic structure, which now appears unable to reduce requests for help, public positions, subsidies and so on.
Just to cite one example, the difficulties of Italian universities that are pressuring the government in order to obtain funds derive precisely from the fact that the Pnrr has created positions and expectations that the “return to reality” is not able to ensure. It’s an old rule: when the State expands and in a short time, it is not easy to reduce the spaces it has occupied.
Furthermore, serious blame must be placed on the European authorities, who instead of countering the vulgar populism of Conte and his followers, were the perfect instrument of a process of deresponsibility aimed at making people believe that somewhere, for example in Brussels, there was the possibility of obtaining resources in exchange for nothing.
The ancient vocation to parasitism of a not insignificant part of our society has found a support in the Commission. It is therefore to be hoped that the imminent vote will open a new page for the Union and restore strength to the logic of the so-called “frugal” countries: also in our interest.
