#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #162 - Citizenship income and poverty (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 "There was a war between rich and poor and the rich won it," billionaire Warren

Buffet said in 2006. Since then, inequalities have grown and Oxfam, an
international confederation of non-profit organizations dedicated to reducing
global poverty, believes that "2,153 super rich own as much as 4.6 billion
people, while the poorest 50% have less than 1% ". ---- All this has escaped not
only the political right of the country, but also the center and the Democratic
Party, a left rather than a left party. All these political forces have spared no
criticism of citizenship income. measure desired by the 5 stars, perhaps
imperfect certainly limited but that in the first 36 months of application (April
2019-April 2022) the Citizenship Income reached 2.2 million households for 4.8
million people, for a disbursement total of almost 23 billion euros.
The measures provided under this denomination are two:
- Citizenship income for an average amount of 565 euros is an economic
contribution intended for those who are Italian or European citizens or long-term
residents, provided they have resided in Italy for at least 10 years.
Furthermore, it is necessary to have an ISEE (Equivalent Economic Situation
Indicator) of less than 9,360 euros per year. It is received by 1.05 million
of households with an average amount of 581 euros
- Citizenship pensions for an amount of 249 euros are received by 99 thousand
households for an average of 288 euros.
In total there are therefore 1,150 thousand households that perceive one of the
two measures equal to 2.6 million people involved. Since April 2019, 1.18 million
people per month have used it on average. In these three years, the Income and
the Citizenship Pension have cost a total of 21.9 billion euros. The peak of measures
disbursed occurred in July 2021 which was the month with the largest number of
beneficiaries (1.4 million), in the most acute phase of the pandemic. The two
measures are divided as follows: to benefit 1.02 million households of Italian
citizens, 41.8 thousand of European citizens and 90 thousand of non-EU citizens.
The average amounts were respectively 553,
570 and 535 euros.
In 503 thousand cases the receiving nucleus is made up of a single person, in 232
thousand by two people, in 185 thousand by three, in 144 thousand by four, in 61
thousand by five and in 26 thousand by six or more. The amounts increase with the
increase of family members, going from 452 euros on average for one person to 718
euros for families with six or more
members. There are 79,000 households who earn more than 1000 euros a month.

Regional distribution of the benefits paid

In Campania, the Income or Citizenship Pension concerns 12 percent of the
population, 11.4 percent in Sicily and 9.8 percent in Calabria. At opposite
extremes there are Trentino-Alto Adige with 0.6 percent, Veneto with 1 percent
and Valle d'Aosta with 1.1 percent.
In terms of amounts, they range from 430 euros on average in Trentino-Alto Adige
to 612 euros in Campania. More generally, the average in the North is € 486, that
in the Center of € 513 and that of the South is € 581. Going down to the
provincial level, we see that Citizenship Income or Pension in Palermo and Naples
involve 15% of the population, 14% in Crotone, 13% in Catania and Caserta and 10%
in Syracuse and Trapani.
Under 1% of the population involved are Como, Sondrio, Lecco, Pordenone, Treviso,
Vicenza, Belluno and Bolzano. In the latter province, the RdC and PdC concern
only 0.1% of the population. Among the provinces where there are the major cities
not yet considered we see that there is Rome with 3.9% of the population
involved, Turin with 3%,
Milan with 2.1% and Bologna with 1.4%.
These data tell us that if the measure were abolished and the resources allocated
to companies to hire. the poorest areas of the country, which have benefited from
it, would be excluded, because they are those where there are fewer companies
that could make use of this measure. It is for this reason that the greatest
criticisms of the provision come from the northern areas and the parties that
represent them, where the need to protect the poorest and marginal categories of
the population is less felt.
But there is more: the biggest criticisms come to citizenship income from those
who say that distributing income, even if minimal, makes it not convenient to
accept work. It follows that the salaries offered are of a lower amount than that
obtained from the citizenship income.  If this is true, it is also true that the
wages offered are miserable, enslaving and blackmailing without considering that
the shortages of workers on the market are caused not only by low wages but by a
chronic shortage of workforce as a direct consequence of the demographic decline
and that this should be done. to remedy by expanding the quotas of migrants and
not hypothesizing phantom naval blockades of migrants and hotspots in third
countries where detention camps for so-called irregular migrants can be set up.
The reasons for the economy and the growing need for manpower will do justice to
these policies even if the right goes to the government, imposing the defense of
a non-existent and unsustainable ethnic purity.
The fact remains that both the income and the citizenship pension, being measures
of social solidarity of the public administration, although consisting of a small
amount, are configured as a right that safeguards the dignity of those who
request it. It is clear that the central problem is the wage issue that must be
tackled by promoting in every way decisive wage increases for all and a minimum
wage - established by law or as the result of contracts and above all the fight
for permanent contracts.
The measures adopted in Spain show that this strategy is possible and that it
must become the center of trade union action and that the problem is central to
Italian society, no matter what the parties say in their electoral programs.

Poverty, misery and religions

However, the provision of these measures clearly shows the presence in the
country of about 5 million poor people surveyed to which must be added at least
as many who live on poor wages and occasional jobs, while about 500,000 young
people leave the country every year. looking for a job. That's not to mention
wages so low that millions of working families can't make ends meet by simply
paying their bills.
But in the "hierarchy of poverty" there is still the category of the invisible,
the homeless, the black workers of the thousands of male and female laborers who
live in precarious and makeshift camps, the last of the last.
Slaves in Italy (see: The labor issue, Ucadi, Political Growth Newsletter, Issue
147 - June 2021).
They, and not only them, are forced to turn to voluntary and charity structures
often run by religious denominations that organize canteens, distribute food aid,
provide clothes and anything else that can help them live.
All religions, aware of the evident infringement of rights constituted by social
inequalities, poverty and destitution, have invented palliatives for inequality,
consisting of almsgiving and charity, starting from the jubilee[1](debt relief).
There are many initiatives by Catholics in our country but other cults have also
developed a position on the matter. Islam, for example, considers ritual
almsgiving (Zakat) as the third of the five pillars that the faithful are called
to respect and legally regulates it; it also allows spontaneous or voluntary
almsgiving (Sadaqa). To allow the charity, it has developed a particular
juridical institution (the Waqf) whose functioning is regulated by specific very
strict rules.[2]
These aids entrusted to charity, although often disinterestedly and for
solidarity purposes, risk being offensive to the dignity of those in need, while
alleviating the suffering of the victims of economic and social inequality.

Anarchist communism, poverty and equality

The anarchist communists therefore shy away from charity and mercy - measures,
moreover, mainly spiritual - as a structural remedy to a predatory economic
system like the capitalist one, fighting here and now the unequal distribution of
wealth, they fight for the recognition of economic equality and rights e
they practice solidarity. For this reason, anarchist communism believes that such
behaviors must be fought with increasing intensity, both in the transition phase
and in that of the realization of the future society, up to their radical
elimination.
Communist anarchism formulates a radical critique of charity, almsgiving, seen as
a palliative to a market society considered by liberals and liberalists. just and
orderly, accepted and shared; condemns and combats these practices recommended by
all cults as it believes that they constitute a degeneration of solidarity.
The concentration of wealth in the hands of an ever smaller number of subjects is
so evident and undeniable that it has also induced some religious confessions to
denounce what is happening. But while these, while considering the unacceptable
phenomenon, continue to support the market economy - when not the collaboration
between captale and work - anarchist communism tackles the problem at its root
and has engraved in its DNA what the Industrial Worker of the Word affirmed in
the its founding manifesto: "The working class and the capitalist class have
nothing in common. There can be no peace while hunger and poverty reign among the
millions of workers and the few who make up the bosses have all the riches of
life. The struggle between these two classes will have to take place until all
the workers gather on the political as well as on the economic field to take and
keep what they have produced with their work, through an economic organization of
producers without affiliations with any political party. ".[3]
For us, it is society that must take charge of everyone's needs: existence
itself, and even more the persistence of the need for charity and almsgiving, to
satisfy needs, represent the failure of the project of building a society of free
and equal and therefore must be fought by every means. It is the primary task of
self-governing bodies to provide and organize society in such a way as to allow
it to provide for the satisfaction of material needs, within the limits of
available resources.
The Catholic Church and its social doctrine are extremely aware today that all
protection against inequalities has failed and that the last, the poorest, are
disarmed in the face of a growing inequality, while they look to the rich who are
getting richer, while misery grows in the world. Despite this, they indicate
temperance as remedies, invoke charity and almsgiving, while revolt is necessary,
the creation of a society of free and equal.
The current pontiff, as an opponent of liberation theology, who had tried to give
organized Catholicism a class imprint, fought and refuted this political strategy
in the society of his country of origin precisely through charity and assistance
to humble and dispossessed with such intensity as to induce superiors to transfer
him to Córdoba, suspecting him of sympathies towards egalitarian demands.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio ascended to the papal throne and remained consistent with
his vision of the pastoral ministry. His heartfelt appeals against inequalities
and poverty, in the face of the exponential growth of inequalities and sufferings
of the least and marginalized, aim to indicate in the Catholic Church and its
social doctrine the only true solution to the problems which, however, remains
that of a capitalist-type society characterized by a market economy, tempered by
charity.
Instead, anarchist communism opposes this political strategy and this vision of
the world and of social and productive relations without any ambiguity, with all
the resoluteness due to oppose the class adversary and to pursue social justice,
equality and freedom from need.
At the same time it opposes and fights all those political forces that consider
work and income a benevolent donation by the bosses to a flock of prone and
undignified workers who have to thank the bosses for the crumbs of their profits
in the form of wages.
This is what makes the struggle for the social revolution and the overturning of
the capital-labor relationship ever timely and urgent for a communist society.

[1]In Leviticus 25,10 it is written "You will declare the fiftieth year holy and
you will proclaim liberation in the land for all its inhabitants. It will be a
jubilee for you; each of you will return to his property and his family ". Other
passages of the Bible (eg. Exodus 23, 10s and Nehemiah 10, 32) emphasize above
all the social aspect. Hence the threefold imperative: the restitution of land,
the forgiveness of debts and the liberation of slaves. Faced with the economic
weight of the Jubilee, Judaism gradually reduced its periodicity and slyly
Christianity transformed it into an occasion for redemption from sins and brought
the deadline to 25 years. For anarchist communism, observance of the provision is
perpetual and involves the restitution to women and men of the property and
enjoyment of all those goods and rights that make life worth living.
[2]On this point, at length: Giovanni Cimbalo, The return of the Wafq,[Riv.
Tel.], (Www.statoechiese.it) n. 14 of 18 April 2015, pp. 1- 65.
[3]See: John Reed, Red America. Class struggle in the United States, Rome, Nova
Delhi Libri, 2012.

The Editors

http://www.ucadi.org/2022/08/25/reddito-di-cittadinanza-e-poverta/
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