Tremonti's hidden agenda

The trouble with being an elderly foreigner interested in things economic and living at 750m in the Apennines, is that there aren't many interlocutors interested in this kind of matter. Despite the fact that my criticisms of italian economic policy ( if that expression is not actually oxymoronic at the moment) are made with the best interests of my adopted country at heart.

How right my academic correspondent at Bocconi was about Tremonti; in my old fashioned anglo saxon terms "he's pissed in the chips yet again". To think that Biagi was murdered for proposing even modest reforms does make one wonder. Notice Mr B taday again siding with unreconstructed trades unions - one went as far as to say that they had written his script themselves. The last time Mr B did so, was just before the last elections over the Alitaglia ( pun intended) affair. That cost the taxpayer some hefty redundancy pay billions inter alia that Air France was about to take on board. Now I'm not a reader of Dan Brown and, as such, not a conspiracy theorist, but I think I see the hidden agenda of these two gentlemen. What looks like a piece of sentimentality ' founding families, preserving social peace etc.) is in fact covering their terror of losing even more of the tax base.

To my mind there are 5 classes of worker in Italy:

Employees with permanent contracts

Civil servants ( public officials/employees )

Employees with short term contracts

Shopkeepers and small tradesmen

And of course the Mafia

The first two have, paid on their behalf by their employer, the full 'Tax on employment' ( often well over 100% of take home pay) even though some would like to call most of it social security not tax. What's in a name when it's your pay packet that's suffers?.

En passant, the second one also costs the taxpayer a fortune in pensions after sometimes the briefest of careers.

The third has less paid into the system on his/her behalf by the employer than the first two.

The fourth by all accounts earns less than his shop assistant/employee and therefore pays little into the system.

The fifth in as much as they bribe to get public contracts are of course imposing a tax of their own whilst providing some services for which there is obviously a demand ( drugs, prostitution etc.) and earning profits therefrom which are totally untaxed.

If the trend is against 'jobs for life' and Brunetta is successful in reducing waste (= personnel ) in the public service then apart from some long term gains to the state pension fund the tax take is trended downwards. Hence the rhetoric, rather than starting on a complete overhaul of the tax situation to bring some equity into the system. Under Padoa-Schioppa at least some attempt at sector benchmarking was made so that, if the Café de Paris in the Via Veneto was turning over less than Bar White Green in Pievebovigliana some questions might be asked. He was also proposing ( to trades union indifference if not downright hostility) some social support for short term contract workers. Trades union members are mostly old and in permanent jobs Q.E.D.

As I wrote to my correspondent,' What think you?'. I know you must be busy man so you don't have much time to mark the essays of an economic illiterate, but it would be great to hear from you.