Il refrain che sentiamo continuamente sulla riduzione del debito è che le politiche di austerity non solo hanno senso economicamente (non lo hanno, lo sappiamo...) ma che sono pure un obbligo morale. Non possiamo lasciare il debito accumulato da noi sulle spalle dei nostri figli. Insomma, dobbiamo farlo per le prossime generazioni. Peccato che sia vero soprattutto il contrario. I nostri figli - quelli che già ci sono - pagano sulla propria pelle non il debito ma l'austerity stessa. Tagli alla scuola, trasformazione in senso ancora più classista del sistema educativo, i poveri con meno servizi, i ricchi che non hanno problemi a godere dei servizi privati a pagamento. Altro che merito, il successo diventa sempre più condizionato dal censo, riducendo ulteriormente la mobilità sociale. Questi i punti salienti fatti da Simon Johnson nell'articolo che riportiamo qui sotto. Si riferisce all'America, ma potrebbe essere lo stesso in Europa, in Italia. E potremmo aggiungere un altro punto. Non solo i nostri figli, ma anche i nostri nipoti pagheranno per questa austerity moralizzatrice. Si ritroveranno non solo con una scuola per signori e una per poveri, ma avranno meno diritti, potranno essere licenziati più facilmente, non potranno andare in pensione. Ecco, forse il nostro obbligo morale è quello di offrire loro più opportunità. Il debito lo potranno pagare tranquillamente, in una società più giusta e che produce meglio, e di più, e soprattutto con meno poveri.
Austerity’s Children
di Simon Johnson
da Project Syndicate
When economists discuss
“fiscal adjustment,” they typically frame it as an abstract and complex
goal. But the issue is actually simple: Who will bear the brunt of
measures to reduce the budget deficit? Either taxes have to go up for
some people, or spending must fall – or both. “Fiscal adjustment” is
jargon; what austerity is always about is the distribution of income.
Much
of Europe is already aware of this, of course. Now it’s America’s turn.
And current indications there suggest that the people most directly in
line for a fiscal squeeze are those who are least able to defend
themselves – relatively poor children. For example, the current budget
sequester (that is, across-the-board spending cuts) is already hurting
programs like Head Start, which supports pre-school education.
The
American comedian Jimmy Kimmel recently poked fun at his compatriots’
lack of fiscal knowledge by asking pedestrians on Hollywood Boulevard
what they thought of “Obama’s decision to pardon the sequester and send
it to Portugal.” The segment is hilarious, but also sad, because the impact on some people’s lives is very real. Around 70,000 children are likely to lose access to Head Start on our current fiscal course.
And much larger cuts
are in store for early-childhood nutrition programs and health care.
Perhaps most shocking are the dramatic cuts to the Medicaid
health-insurance program that the House of Representatives’ Republican
majority have embraced in their latest budget proposal. Paul Ryan, the
chairman of the House Budget Committee, proposes to balance the budget over the next 10 years largely by slashing the program. About half of all people covered by Medicaid are children.
Is
it fair to force low-income children to bear the burden of fiscal
adjustment? According to data available on the economist Emmanuel Saez’s
invaluable Web site, from 1993 to 2011, average real income
for the bottom 99% of the population (by income) rose by 5.8%, while
the top 1% experienced real income growth of 57.5%. The top 1% captured
62% of all income growth over this period, partly owing to a sharp rise
in returns to higher education in recent decades. (On average, those
with only a high school education or less have few good income
prospects.)
This
implies that, if anything, the tax system should become more
progressive, with the proceeds invested in public goods that are not
sufficiently provided by the private sector – things like early
childhood education and preventive health care to minimize educational
disruption resulting from common ailments like childhood asthma.
Think
of it this way: In recent decades, some families chose locations and
occupations that seemed to offer a reasonable means of support – and
good prospects for their children. Many of these decisions turned out
badly, largely because information technology (computers and how they
are used) eliminated many middle-class jobs. Increasing globalization of
trade also did not help in this regard. In addition, as Till von
Wachter of Columbia University has documented, prolonged periods of
unemployment for parents have a severe and lasting negative impact on their children.
Children
whose families cannot provide a decent start in life deserve help. But
America has not provided it – a point recently made by Jeb Bush, a
leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
“In our country today,” Bush said in a speech to fellow conservatives,
“if you’re born poor, if your parents didn’t go to college, if you
don’t know your father, if English isn’t spoken at home, then the odds
are stacked against you.”
Nor
is America likely to provide such help in the future, given the coming
budget cuts’ disproportionate impact on children at the lower end of the
income distribution.
America
can easily afford to do better, of course. Its large budget deficits
reflect the impact of tax breaks that favor the wealthy and upper middle
class; an unfunded expansion of Medicare coverage to include
prescription medicines; two foreign wars; and, most important, a banking
system that was allowed to get out of control, inflicting massive
disruption on the real economy (and thus on tax revenue).
Today’s
children did not play a role in any of these policy mistakes. The
preschoolers who are about to lose access to Head Start weren’t even
born when they were made.
mposing
austerity on poor children is not just unfair; it is also bad
economics. When economists, again with their dry jargon, talk about a
country’s “human capital,” what they really mean is the cognitive and
physical abilities of its people.
As I pointed out in recent Congressional testimony,
poor education leads to poor job prospects, poor families, and back to
poor education – if not with a detour through incarceration, which makes
it even harder to break the cycle. Unfortunately, no one in a position
of power is likely to heed such arguments.
They
should. When you travel to a foreign country for the first time, and
you see neglected, ill-fed, and uneducated children, do you regard that
country as likely to be one of the world’s great economic powers over
the next half-century? Or do you worry for its future?
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