According to Luigi Einaudi a government supported by social consensus would have founded some additional expenses by capital levy, or other additional taxes, while a politically weak one would have preferred issuing debt. So, governments, and social groups that press on ruling class, respectively managed their fiscal choices in order to drive social consensus and to avoid a burden. Some distributive effects (e.g. fiscal illusion) can accommodate taxes in order to maintain consensus toward government by social groups that it support and so to preserve its legitimacy. However, the debt, as delayed taxation, is a political decision that may be exploited until the public debt is sustainable. Later, a rising fiscal instability may destroy public debt credibility and crumbling social consensus. According to the sociological approach to public finance (Schumpeter and Puviani), we emphasize that social conflicts curbed government choices. These dynamics of social consensus and public debt sustainability (measured following Pasinetti [1998] and Sylos Labini [2004]) are seized by a two-by-two table that defines some evolutionary trajectories from high sustainability towards dangerous unsustainability matched with these of loss or gain of a social consensus. From 1861 to 2000, the history of large modern public debts in Italy followed some consent paths going to through three distinct systems of government finance and public debt sustainability. In each system, one type of constitutional consensus stood out upheld by a very different political regime. Before 1914, in the liberal era, property owners lent to governments that were as corporations controlled by themselves; and these governments guaranteed that funds borrowed will be repaid. The interwar period was an age of fiscal transition and of reaction toward the access of masses to the political life. During the first war and related postwar, the collapse of the liberal democracy derived firstly from a great fiscal shock, beyond to all financial means yielded in the current fiscal system and beyond to the fiscal tolerance of subjects’ incomes in the medium run. The fascist regime benefited of these widespread discontent and social strains in order to resume a fiscal stability, benefited just of inflation that nourished them, and finally establish a new social order. The overthrow of fascism set up the democratic republic. In this two postwars, fiscal rules and consensus mechanisms was reshuffled in terms of type of revenue, quality and levels of expenses, private savings and contributory burden, debt and debt management. The next financial system lasted from the liberation and the first republican governments based themselves on the acknowledgement of masses consent by the fiscal state.
Italian government debt sustainability in the long run. 1861-2000
CONTI, GIUSEPPE
2008-01-01
Abstract
According to Luigi Einaudi a government supported by social consensus would have founded some additional expenses by capital levy, or other additional taxes, while a politically weak one would have preferred issuing debt. So, governments, and social groups that press on ruling class, respectively managed their fiscal choices in order to drive social consensus and to avoid a burden. Some distributive effects (e.g. fiscal illusion) can accommodate taxes in order to maintain consensus toward government by social groups that it support and so to preserve its legitimacy. However, the debt, as delayed taxation, is a political decision that may be exploited until the public debt is sustainable. Later, a rising fiscal instability may destroy public debt credibility and crumbling social consensus. According to the sociological approach to public finance (Schumpeter and Puviani), we emphasize that social conflicts curbed government choices. These dynamics of social consensus and public debt sustainability (measured following Pasinetti [1998] and Sylos Labini [2004]) are seized by a two-by-two table that defines some evolutionary trajectories from high sustainability towards dangerous unsustainability matched with these of loss or gain of a social consensus. From 1861 to 2000, the history of large modern public debts in Italy followed some consent paths going to through three distinct systems of government finance and public debt sustainability. In each system, one type of constitutional consensus stood out upheld by a very different political regime. Before 1914, in the liberal era, property owners lent to governments that were as corporations controlled by themselves; and these governments guaranteed that funds borrowed will be repaid. The interwar period was an age of fiscal transition and of reaction toward the access of masses to the political life. During the first war and related postwar, the collapse of the liberal democracy derived firstly from a great fiscal shock, beyond to all financial means yielded in the current fiscal system and beyond to the fiscal tolerance of subjects’ incomes in the medium run. The fascist regime benefited of these widespread discontent and social strains in order to resume a fiscal stability, benefited just of inflation that nourished them, and finally establish a new social order. The overthrow of fascism set up the democratic republic. In this two postwars, fiscal rules and consensus mechanisms was reshuffled in terms of type of revenue, quality and levels of expenses, private savings and contributory burden, debt and debt management. The next financial system lasted from the liberation and the first republican governments based themselves on the acknowledgement of masses consent by the fiscal state.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
