Translator: Nicoletta Pedrana Reviewer: Michele Gianella
We live in deeply unequal world.
According to Oxfam’s reports,
in 2019
the world’s 26 richest individuals
owned the same wealth as the world's poorer half,
3.8 billion people.
And in the same year in Italy,
the wealthiest five percent of the population
had amassed a wealth greater than that of 90% of the poorer population.
And that’s not all.
In the years of the pandemic,
those reports reveal
that the world’s 10 richest people
saw their fortune more than double
at a pace of 15,000$ a second,
whilst 163 million people were forced into poverty.
The already considerable inequalities
have only been exacerbated by the pandemic,
thus generating new needs and also new forms of poverty.
What are inequalities?
What shapes do they take?
For example, there are socio-economic inequalities
that are reflected
in differences in income and material conditions;
there are disparities of access to basic services,
such as health care and education;
there are territorial disparities,
recognition, gender and generational disparities.
They result
in high concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few.
But also in the huge pay gap
between top managers
and ordinary male and female workers
who are relegated at the very bottom
of these increasingly sharper corporate pyramids.
They lead to a patriarchal conception of the family
that is oblivious to the rights of other families;
to discrimination against migrants
and the blackmailing of those who have no rights.
Not to mention the physical barriers
experienced by people with mobility impairments.
Or again, salary or employment gaps
affecting women.
And the injustice that cyclically reproduces itself
between the North and the South of the world.
And the lack of say and sway in decision-making roles.
Well, society can't work for common good while dealing with such inequalities.
This awareness has now spread
among the world’s economic institutions, such as OECD.
This is no longer a time for excuses.
We can no longer accept this situation.
Society can only rise again
if it’s prepared to lend a helping hand to those who struggle,
so that they can finally rise from their condition.
While the World Bank estimates
that half of the population
lives on an average of $ 5.50 a day,
on that same day
the wealthy earn about $ 2.5 billion.
Well, let me say something:
it's a good thing
that someone is creating value and making a profit.
What's the problem then?
It's the lack of wealth redistribution systems,
which ensure
that the more you have, the more you contribute
to the greater wellbeing, to the one of society as a whole.
Because such an unjust world is unbearable, and it has no future.
Inequalities that are also closely linked
to the climate emergency,
for the countries that least contributed to the ongoing climate crisis
that are paying the highest price.
Little do we know about the story behind Lake Chad,
which used to be an extraordinary, invaluable resource
nestled between four African countries bordering the Sahara.
Over the last few decades, it has dried up due to global warming,
driving thousands and thousands of people into poverty,
or forcing them to leave their homes.
We are also responsibile, honestly, for what is happening to Lake Chad.
But also within our borders,
those who pay the highest price for the climate crisis
are those who cannot decide where to live, where to work
and what air to breathe while working.
Energy inflation and skyrocketing bills are affecting everyone, of course.
But in such an unequal society,
it is the lowest income groups that are hit the hardest.
It's difficult to talk about inequalities through images,
but if there is one that struck me,
it will have to be the fires raging in California in 2019.
While everything was on fire,
we saw female and male domestic workers
heading towards the blaze
while the wealthy house owners were busy evacuating.
Those are the people for whom one day less of salary
may mean not being able to put food on the table.
This is why recent years have seen the spreading
of a new awareness -
thanks to the intertwined activism of the new generations, mostly -
that social justice goes hand in hand with climate justice.
And that we must, therefore, combine the fight for ecological conversion
with fights against all forms of inequality and discrimination.
And so, the question we have to ask ourselves
is this:
can we formulate policies
that are aimed at both climate justice and social justice?
As Alexander Langer wrote a long time ago,
'We will only attain ecological conversion when it becomes socially desirable.’
How do we make it desirable?
I would like to give you a few concrete examples
to show you that those who are in public administration at all levels -
I myself was involved at a regional level -
can implement policies that make a difference.
For example,
by investing in the redevelopment of low-income housing.
Doing so means reducing bills among households in lower tax brackets,
as well as climate-altering emissions.
We can do so
by encouraging homeowners to replace their gas boilers
with heat pumps
that are connected to a clean energy source,
such as solar panels on rooftops.
It is a self-sufficient system.
We can also implement
free public local transport policies
for young people belonging to the least wealthy families,
These free transport policies can be extended to the homeless,
because they are entitled to mobility, also.
It is a way to foster a culture
of public transport
that is less polluting
than using a car
to go to school every day.
Policies can be considered
to support energy communities,
which allow citizens, associations, municipalities and businesses
to get together as a community
to self-produce and share green, renewable energy.
Again, a win-win situation:
lower energy bills and lower emissions.
We need sparks like these, to trigger a different model of society.
They give us hope, we will be part of the system.
Why have inequalities increased so much,
and why has the planet got so close to a point of no return?
It is not because of a cynical twist of fate.
It’s the result of precise choices
within the socio-economic model
that has been in force over the past few years:
neoliberalism.
According to this model, inequalities are the price to pay
for the illusion of an endless growth
that will eventually translate
into a redistribution of wealth.
It didn’t turn out to be that way: the opposite came true.
The good news is,
if choices have brought us here, wrong as they may have been,
we can still make different ones.
This is the way to go.
“Freedom is inclusion”
says an unforgettable song by Italian singer Giorgio Gaber.
It is true.
There cannot be freedom
without inclusion in one’s own community.
However, to take part
one has to be in the position of doing so.
What kind of freedom does a temporary worker, man or woman, have
with a salary that does not pay the bills,
someone who can't make it to the end of the month,
let alone at the end of the week?
Or what if they have never had the chance to access education
to be able to inform themselves
and make an active contribution to the public life?
So, yes, freedom is inclusion. But freedom is also redistribution.
Redistribution of what?
Of wealth, power, knowledge and time.
What does redistribution of knowledge mean?
A set of bold investments, from the first few months of life.
An investment in education,
state university and public research.
It means investing in education since a child’s first months of life.
I come from a region
that has long been investing in nursery schools.
Why?
For three good reasons:
According to research studies, an early education
makes both boys and girls more confident.
It is also a way to cope with illiteracy and school dispersion.
Secondly,
it is a fundamental tool
that helps families reconcile life with work,
which, in turn, supports women in the workplace.
Thirdly,
by investing in social infrastructure
we manage to turn a part of that unpaid caregiving work,
which in many families is a burden on women’s shoulders,
into paid, qualified work within a system of services.
Redistributing knowledge
also means avoiding large concentrations of data,
think about the data issue;
It means being able to govern technological innovation:
technology made our lives easier, streamlined production processes,
and we can see it everywhere.
However, we should not allow this form of facilitation
to come with old forms of exploitation of piecework.
Think of food delivery.
This is also the chance
to formulate new policies to safeguard digital jobs
and workplaces changing all around us,
to prevent these non-guided processes
from further polarising gaps and reinforcing inequalities.
Redistribution of wealth.
Wealth needs redistributing
because we cannot accept such low salaries;
it's unacceptable to have such high rates of temporary employment
that steal our futures, above all those of young and female workers.
62% of female and male workers
under the age of 24 - according to September 2022 data,
hold fixed-term contracts
and cannot afford to build a future.
And so we have to rise up against these form of job insecurity:
we need to raise wages
and finally set a minimum wage
below which workers are not employed but exploited.
We could tackle inequalities
by closing the gender pay gap
that shows that in Europe
women doing the same job of a man
still earn on average 14% less,
on an hourly basis.
This is also unacceptable.
But if we really want to redistribute wealth
with a European, global approach,
then we must not fail to see the big elephant in the room.
We must see how much wealth is hidden in tax havens.
Also where there are no palm trees, there are tax havens close to us.
There are policies
that could help us recover at least part of that money.
Take Professor James Henry, and his “Tax Justice”:
back in 2012 he was able to estimate -
even though the underground economy
is difficult to detect -
that up to 32 trillion dollars are hidden in tax havens around the world.
32,000 billion dollars!
is a hel of a lot of money!
It’s the equivalent of 20 years of Italy’s GDP!
Well, he isn’t the only one to have investigated in this field.
There have been other major inquiries
such as LuxLeaks, the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers.
A few years later, Richard Murph, yet another professor,
came up with another interesting study.
He explained, in the EU alone
the amount of missing tax proceeds
could get to 825 billion euros per year.
I mean, 825 billion euros!
These are resources subtracted from investments in our future,
in research, innovation, ecological conversion,
redistribution.
And they can be recovered, they must be recovered.
It would be enough to fund another Next Generation EU.
Shocking data.
Because in this downward fiscal competion,
eveng among EU states,
everyone is losing out, States and citizens alike.
The only ones who benefit are those who, like many corporations,
can get zero-point loans.
Or, giving free rein to their imagination, come up with pension schemes,
patent boxes, phantom companies, trusts, Chinese boxes.
In this case too, policies can be implemented
that go in a different direction.
Policies based on transparency, which do not even cost that much.
Speaking about companies,
let me throw a few concrete examples:
the importance of an automatic exchange of information
also with developing countries,
which wouldn’t have the strength, per se, to request this type of information.
There’s an important policy known as CBCR
CBCR stands for Country-By-Country Reporting.
It was approved in 2021 at a European level.
to ask all large corporations operating in Europe
to prepare a country-by-country report with data on profit and taxes paid.
A little more transparency would be enough
to counteract many of these elusive mechanisms.
And we should do this by involving the poorer countries
because, once again, they are those who end up paying the highest price.
According to data released by the African Union,
Member States of the African Union, in the last 50 years,
have lost about a thousand billion dollars
due to tax evasion, tax avoidance and corruption.
And it’s pretty much the same amount
they received in development funding.
We are not helping them at home, as someone suggests.
We are giving with one hand and taking away with the other.
Let’s not forget to redistribute time, too.
Because it’s literally about time
we unlocked the time of caregivers within families.
Other figures published by Oxfam
show that if tomorrow morning we were to give
all of women’s unpaid care workloads
to a company,
that company would have a turnover of $10,000 billion.
It means equal pay leave, as they have started doing in Spain,
fully paid and non-transferable for both parents.
Finland is in the process of extending it to five months,
while here in Italy fathers only get ten days.
Taking steps forward also means reducing inequalities.
We need to make progress in terms of family policies as well.
A redistribution of power
means participation, listening,
knowing that we can only bridge gaps
if we listen to the needs of several areas, communities,
and take specific measures that cater to those different needs,
which do not have to be competing.
When we had to help many families
that could not pay rent during the pandemic,
we didn’t allocate the same sum money to all.
In fact, this doesn’t help reduce inequalities.
We provided financial support
based on a needs assessment,
such as the needs of laid-off female and male workers
facing substantial income reductions,
or seasonal workers
who were left for months without any income.
If we look at those different needs, and give proportional financial support,
then we can make it - this is the role that politics should play,
that institutions should play.
Bridging those gaps,
not heightening the social tensions
that regrettably inequalities bring with them.
Thank you.
(Applause)