Italy: 16 facts and 7 anecdotes (3/3)
A biased attempt to root-cause based on daily observations
In my view one of the root causes of all the above (Part1, Part2), tax evasion in primis, might is rather cultural. I am conscious that the argument below is likely “biased”: I am well aware of my frustration for seeing rules very often not respected — tax evasion being the number one example and a few political figures that stayed for a decade or more that publicly seemed not to care much about laws being the second one.
1. Respecting rules
We have a lot of virtues but we are not known for respecting rules. There is almost no proud for that or for being a good civil servant. The one that evades taxes is the smart one, is the “furbo”.
Not only we have a tendency to “circumnavigate” rules but also we tend to be OK with others completely disregarding them and we end up accepting the unacceptable. Some personalities in politics would be and would have been unacceptable in other countries.
Fact16: Our parliament is full of people with serious criminal investigations pending, often about being affiliated with the mob. I don’t know the number exactly from what I remember reading it could be as high as 50% (not 100% sure though).
Anecdote6: Ask a German whether or not the term “rigidity” has a positive connotation in their language. And then ask an Italian. In Germany is positive, in Italy is negative. That tells something.
Anecdote7: I have always found it difficult to explain to my foreign friends the “parking situation” that we have sometimes in big Italian cities: there’s a guy standing in a public parking area, when you park he comes in and asks for money. The underlying threat is “If you don’t give me a couple of euros I will scratch your car” covered by the excuse that they are there to help you in parking your car. Apparently they don’t have this thing abroad that much and I guess that if someone would start this practice they would not accept it. In Italy unfortunately we do accept it - back to the previous point. You can experience this local folklore all along Viale Lungo Tevere in Rome.
2. Information and education
There is also a strong issue about how informed people are. For example I don’t think that the reason why tax evasion is bad for society, is properly communicated and explained so that it arrives to everyone.
Moreover we don’t have an equivalent of the BBC, teens spends their afternoons watching dumb TV programs. Poor information contributes to the problems outlined above. Of course we can’t have BBC as the majority of us still don’t speak English.
Quick fix here is to strongly incentivize people in learning English: create channel with extremely attractive content (can be movies or anything that people, kids, really do want to watch) in English only, maybe with subtitles.
Anecdote8: Once I was talking to a friend with master degree cum Laude in Medicine, about “Condono” (see Part 2). She had no understanding of how incentives play and little understanding of the cons of tax evasion as well. So she went “If the lawyer charges you less and he does not make you the invoice, what’s the issue..you are both better off”. Cum Laude.
3. The elephants
Looking at the numbers the elephants in the room are tax evasions, debt payments and pensions. Personally I would talk only about this and forget for now the potential 0.xx% of GDP efficiencies that we can get by reforming sector Z or Y. Policy wise the things to be done were 3.
1. Change pension rules — Now for all the noise generated, and all the complaints, still the basic principle has been fixed by Monti government. It’s great by the way that a reform that no government dared to undertake in years but that was a clear necessity to everyone not gets highly condemned by the same people who didn’t have the guts/political will to carry it out before, politics is amazing. Ok that’s done, for all the mistakes that there were in it, it’s finally a progress.
2. Crack down on tax evasion — Looking at the numbers it is fairly clear that the elephants in the room are tax evasions and debt payments. We could fix the first one use the proceeds to give immediate tax breaks to the many honest companies and employees, restoring demand and then to reduce the debt.
I would fix first n.2 before even start arguing what n.3 should be — I like the “One thing at a time” approach even if the democrats are, at the time I am writing, down in popularity.
Link to the previous two posts:
