Italy’s Meloni Starts To Focus on the ‘Vision Thing’

Even as Giorgia Meloni grapples with Italy’s day-to-day governance, the new prime minister is forging the shape of things to come — what George Herbert Walker Bush called the “vision thing.” Ms. Meloni is charting a course that centers on strengthening the Magic Boot’s economy via a fusion of market-based initiatives, targeted tax cuts, and a judicious use of funds of the EU’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Undergirding such a plan, though, is Ms. Meloni’s belief in Italian exceptionalism. What the Prime Minister espouses requires changing the economic narrative. Like her predecessor, Mario Draghi, she promotes Italian technology, innovation, and dynamism — both domestically and internationally. Unlike Mr. Draghi, though, Ms. Meloni’s task as a leader with an electoral mandate gives her greater latitude. In remarks to the Italian confederation of small and medium-sized private industry on its 75th anniversary, Ms. Meloni hailed such enterprises as “patriots of work” whose ingenuity and creativity “contribute to making Italy the great nation it is.” Ms. Meloni noted that her government “takes its inspiration from a simple principle: it is companies, and not the State, that generate wealth and employment, while it is the State’s job to put those companies and workers in the best position possible to be able to generate wealth and employment.”Additionally, Ms. Meloni has outlined a plan to gradually reduce personal and corporate income taxes — with the latter a reward for those who invest and hire people in Italy, based on the principle of “the more you hire, the fewer taxes you owe to the State.” Giorgia Meloni is well aware that ever since Italy joined the euro — and certainly in the last decade — its economic growth has been lackluster. The Seed of Aeneas boasted a thriving economy throughout the 1970s and 1980s. On average, Italy’s growth rates ranged between three percent to five percent during that period. No, Italy is not bolting from the common currency on Ms. Meloni’s watch. While Rome’s post-pandemic spike in GDP was impressive, the prime minister understands Economics 101: real GDP per capita elevates a nation’s standard of living. Negative GDP growth results in the opposite. Italy’s debt has grown at about the same pace as Germany’s — by virtue of Rome’s cuts in spending. In the wake of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, the austerity measures taken to curtail Italy’s government spending were successful. The OECD rated il Bel Paese’s austerity efforts to be stronger than those of Germany. Yet the problem isn’t Italy’s enormous debt; the problem today is Italy’s debt to GDP ratio. The GDP portion of the equation is the laggard. Without sustained GDP growth, Italy cannot service its debt — hence Ms. Meloni’s push to unshackle the animal spirits of the marketplace. Ms. Meloni issued a decree in March greenlighting the construction of the Ponte sullo Stretto, a suspension bridge, the world’s longest, linking Calabria and the island of Sicily. Meloni is also advocating a “Mattei Plan”— after Enrico Mattei, the founder of Eni, Italy’s State-run energy company — that would make the Magic Boot a gas hub in the Mediterranean. So, what do left-wing critics and Elly Schlein’s “shadow government” have to say about Ms. Meloni’s proactive approach to governance? According to 88-year-old industrialist Carlo De Benedetti, who resides in Switzerland, Giorgia Meloni is afflicted with dementia. To paraphrase the Bard, the common curse of the left — folly and ignorance — be De Benedetti’s in great revenue.The Meloni government’s regional affairs minister, Roberto Calderoli, recently introduced a draft law that would create “differentiated autonomy” for some regions. Though this is neither secessionist nor devolutionary — as is Spain’s Catalonia or the UK’s Scotland — such a measure might put certain regions in a more advantageous fiscal position vis-à-vis, say, healthcare. Ms. Meloni urged Mr. Calderoli to revisit the issue, reminding the good minister that differentiated autonomy must never take precedence over a key goal of the Fratelli d’Italia, transforming Italy into a semi-presidential republic predicated on the principle of a national unity that traces its origins to ancient Rome.

Italy’s Meloni Starts To Focus on the ‘Vision Thing’

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