by Giuseppe Pignataro*
Budget laws are not just budgets: they are a country’s way of opening or closing gaps. There 2025 Budget choose a path calm: lighten the work, appreciate the investment, perfect the cut. It is clean architecture but cleanliness, in terms of economy, is not innocent: it can polish the corridors and leave the doors closed.
First gate: threshold. Irpef in three brackets makes the relief of the lower middle class stable; cutting wedge be a two-way mechanism (integration below 20 thousand, reduction between 20 and 40 thousand); above 75 thousand there is a cumulative limit on deductions, with corrections for children and disabilities.
But unfortunately, the threshold is also the same border: they intercept standard workers and barely touch those living on the fringes of the labor market (discontinuous, semi-subordinate, and low-income self-employed workers). Italy’s current poverty is not the main thing ‘no job’: that’s not enough work. As long as the lever remains cutting, aid will come late, suddenly, and often not reach those whose incomes are inadequate. Here a conceptual leap is required: a credit in monthly refundable work, which is benchmarked to ISEE and local prices. Not a gift: breath.
Second part: place. The maneuver speaks the language of bidding: Ires 20% reward for those who reinvest profits and hire; tax credits for capital goods in the South; New Sabatini. It is correct to force investment attractiveness. But growth without geography produces a mirage: if nests, transportation, and homes remain scarce in the places where jobs are created, then employment will spiral and real wages evaporate into mandatory spending. There it became house policy income policy: rental vouchers indexed to city rent, social rental housing, fast track to public housing efficiency against energy poverty. Without ‘livelihood’, income is not a sentence.
Third gate: time. Health care resources are expanding and rates and tools are constantly being updated; emergency room, palliative care, mental health; Reduction of waiting list appreciated. AND maintenance of universalism. But health justice is not the announcement, but rather the date of the visit. Waiting every month is a tax borne primarily by those who cannot afford to buy time in the private sector. State money should be calendar compress: standards required for ordering and interventions, published by local health authorities; proximity of medical transportation in inland areas. In healthcare, efficiency is the technical name for compassion.
Fourth gate: demographic needs. Baby bonus, 80% leave for three months, more baby care, exemption from contributions for mothers: the management is consistent with a birth emergency. But the geography is uneven: i 3,600 euros for the nursery they help with where the nest is and what it costs; elsewhere they are symbols. If the aim is to reduce child poverty, the pivot should be shifted to a strengthened single benefit in the first two deciles and ‘territorial’ where life is the most cherished thing; and the quality of proximity to cities with high levels of deprivation: guaranteed childcare hours, school transport, educational mediation. Freedom, according to Sen, is not having money, but being able to turn it into possibilities.
Fifth gap: administrative friction. Such maneuvers require many decisions and controls, strengthened monitoring of the use of funds, and plans for several years. AND wisdom. But the non-take-ups – those who were eligible and didn’t take them – appeared there: in the distance between the line and the counter. Each additional step selects the ‘robust bureaucracy’, not the poorest. Administration is actual redistributive policy: short procedures, automation, predictable payments. In the fight against poverty, simplicity is not style, but substance.
Finally, there is one request that measures everything: Does this maneuver reduce uncertainty for vulnerable groups? If families at the bottom of the group knew how much they would receive, when and for how long, then poverty would be reduced even with the same resources. However, if the assistance is episodic, territorial, subject to deadlines and rubber stamps, then insecurity will undermine the benefits provided. Growth without security is like a bridge without parapets: one breath is enough to bring it down.
The budget law becomes correct when it is transformed equality from images to experiences. Unfortunately, in this case, there is no foundation that unites them: a minimum reimbursable ‘last resort’ employment income, a housing policy that tracks prices, binding health standards, a government that pays for time before money. Because the State is not a place to distribute aid, but a place to distribute aid expand possibilities. And probability, by definition, is measured from below.
*Associate Professor of Economic Policy – University of Bologna
