New
public priorities

Net of the draconian measures envisaged by the major banking institutions (ECB, FED etc.) envisaged to support the world crisis, the problem remains of how the situation will be managed and administered when a sort of “prolonged normalcy” will be restored.

The problem of public funds, budgets and fiscal measures to be adopted – including the possibility of changing the structure of taxation for or against some economic sectors – seems not only possible but also easily foreseeable. So where do you get the resources a state will need?

Assuming that the situation we are experiencing represents a sort of ongoing laboratory – an unprecedented test bench that requires the abandonment of predetermined schemes – it is easy to predict that all the resources used by nations to restore the economy, or at least avoid its vertical collapse, they will then end up weighing on public debt.

This will lead to the explosion of collective debt with a consequent exponential increase in the interests that each nation will have to pay. Needless to say that – for a country like ours, sunk by decades of waste and unjustified spending – this is an element of lively concern.

Considering this simple premise, an answer to the above question (ie: where to get the money) seems relatively simple: from the wealthiest.

From the 1980s onwards, the wealthy people of the planet have accumulated large estates and paid very few taxes. The size of the gap that separates the great rich of the planet from the poorest has never been so vast and it is sufficient to check the official figures to realize it. Over the years, the tax deregulation towards the big players (starting from the so-called web giants) has made it possible to delocalise the profits by benefiting from “puppet” taxes that allowed to circumvent the tax authorities of the countries where the turnover was actually produced.

A rearrangement of the composition of the taxes towards these subjects, together with some taxes in the form of assets for the highest incomes (hypothetically those above 150/200 thousand €/$ per year, first house excluded) will be one of the most urgent measures in the post-epidemic. In the same way, a strict control over the activities carried out on the national territory (whether they are material or digital) will be the only way to link the production of wealth to a fair payment of taxes.

Contribution specificity

Furthermore, it will be necessary to implement targeted taxation towards productive sectors which have always been immune to State intervention. Resources will be drained from purely speculative financial activities, for example. Furthermore, in the wake of the contraction in labor due to the inevitable widespread robotization process, States will require companies to compensate percentagely for the implementation of robotic machinery and the consequent decrease in human presence in the production departments of companies (on the model of the so-called Robot Tax).

The great players, primarily digital ones, will push to claim their independence and financial freedom, shielding themselves with the threat of removing their services from the nation in question. This threat will be a real “sword of Damocles”: their services, in fact, offered at the beginning with a simple recreational purpose or at best as free services for the community, have rapidly evolved into official communication channels and instruments of applied politics and economics.

In many cases they have also become, for companies, real advertising vehicles capable of determining a decisive growth in turnover. In the case of political figures, communication tools have become propaganda tools, capable of guiding the electorate and determining the outcome of political consultations, even crucial ones.

Granitic fiscal beliefs will have to be maintained.

Faced with the possibility that the large commercial enterprises “move house”, a real neo-liberal crusade will be activated aimed at dismembering the front of the voices favorable to taxation.

But if it is true that the presence of a company in this sector on its territory could generate a not negligible economic / fiscal income (and indeed become a driving force for the economy) it is equally true that a fair taxation of profits represents a tool that it promotes business competition and protects against easy circumvention of the rules.

However, not all states will listen to common sense. A ruthless struggle will therefore begin to grab the favors of these large industries, flattering the shareholders with proposals for compliant taxation and large-scale economic benefits. The real battle for the States (and more generally for the Community institutions of each continent) will be to maintain their economic independence, a possible goal only by working in synergy with neighboring countries and international partners.

The elimination of tax havens, islands protected from the contributory point of view, is only the first step of this process which will have to lead – all the more in delicate situations such as the present one – to the international ratification of uniform rules for all productive sectors.

Recovery of the submerged income

More specifically of the Italian reality, the control of the shadow economy (sector where we boast a sad record, between tax fraud, total or partial tax evasion etc.) will be another supply vehicle for public wealth. Italy can no longer afford such widespread evasion, such a high percentage of black, gray or poorly regulated workers.

Reflecting entirely on these processes will be necessary to manage a constant cash flow to provide economic coverage for many of the ambitious programs that States will be called upon to carry out in the post-pandemic period.

Last piece, not negligible: the close fight against the mafias and criminal organizations. Given the enormous capitals that move and administer, the fight against organized crime will be another unavoidable point of the project to power the coffers of a nation in a virtuous way.

When the (we hope) huge subsidies from the European institutions arrive, administer them with care, paying attention to where and how they will be divided (also monitoring the underworld inflation in public contracts and private companies) will be the first evaluation index for local and national leaderships . If they are used in a bad way (starting from the bottomless wells of the “great works”, real monuments to institutional waste) it will not only be affected by the credibility of some rulers, but rather the entire national social fabric.

The states that will give in on these points, which will refuse to tighten their fiscal measures towards the privileged groups, will not only feed a large-scale corruption and clientele system, but will be responsible for the vertical growth of a public debt to levels that are no longer controllable.

This will determine a consequent transfer of sovereignty towards creditors, the general impoverishment and the sale of the country’s strategic assets to stem the economic hole that has arisen. Thus emptied, the state and its institutions will remain as a simulacrum of a dismembered and inert social fabric.