Lessons from Italian politics

After the last elections of parliament has Italy obtained a so called populist government led by PM Giuseppe Conte. Looking from here in Finland, that seems to have two consequences.

The first one - and highly appreciated here under the North star - is the reduction of people´s migration over the Mediterranean sea. And the second one - largely irritating Finns - is the loose budget policy of PM Conte, criticized even by the EU leaders and possibly leading to the flow of Finnish taxpayers money to operations intended to save Italian banking system.

In practice, the Italian government is pumping borrowed money into the Italian economy with two wishes. The first one is to keep people in a good mood - in other words keeping their voters happy with the government for at least few years to stay in power. The second one is to use borrowed money for pushing the Italian economy towards growth after many years of cessation. My hope is, that the second aim would be successful - simply because the alternative would be a serious pan-European economic crisis.

A simple analysis of Italian development says that the massive flow of people from developing countries led to a dissatisfaction of Italian citizens, which led them to vote so called populists to political leadership and therefore to form a regime behaving fully irresponsibly in its economic policy.  Or finding a solution to Italian stagnation - although no one considers it possible.

A simple lesson to be learned from Italian development is that any wise government - including the political leaders of the EU - should carefully listen to peoples expectations and views. That was not done by the previous Italian government nor by the PM Juha Sipilä´s regime in Finland, and neither have most of the regimes in our continent understood the importance of refraining from irritating voters. I mean: most regimes in EU have not been blessed with clear understanding of their duty as political leaders in a democracy to serve their citizens instead of a crowd of third world people seeking for a better standard of living in Europe. 

It remains to be seen what happens in Finland in the next elections of the parliament in April 2019. It is, however, clear that a fall of Italian economy to the arms of the EU as well as a new acceleration of migration from developing countries might have unpredictable consequences.

Because there is nothing unclear in this issue, it is surprising how sloppy the immigration policy of PM Sipilä´s government has been. That is because a new wave of humanitarian immigration would result in a colossal price to be paid by both the regime and people of Finland. The latter consequence could, of course, be fixed or worsened - depending on the people´s votes - in the next elections four year ahead.

Thus, the situation in Finland is right now in many ways similar to that in Italy. The difference, however, is that the Finnish party most probably collecting votes from failed immigration, the True Finns, has not shown any signs of irresponsible economic policy like the regime of Italy. Actually, their message has rather been vice versa.

Very interestingly: we learned today that Hillary Clinton of USA advised us Europeans to avoid further humanitarian immigration, because that irrigates people and might therefore favor populist politicians. I think we should listen her advise this time, although there are plenty of things I disagree with the former first lady of her country. 

The original professor´s thought in Finnish:
Italian talous- ja muut opit