Here's how to balance the budget immediately

6 Elimination of grandiose and useless projects: 3 billion.
One of the main causes of the Greek instability was the Athen's Olympics, a source of corruption and waste. The crisis is an excellent opportunity for downsizing several useless large projects. A moratorium on large projects, which allows us to keep the already existing works of which instead there is considerable need, would lead to an annual savings that is difficult to quantify: let's use a conservative figure and say 3 billion.

7 Cutting of inequitable pensions and other pension measures: 6 billion.
Alongside the many pensions that are close to the minimum, there are nearly 1,600,000 pensions that exceed €2000 per month, for a total amount of more than 60 billion. Some of these are totally disproportionate to the contributions paid in the past and there is no reason, neither moral nor of fairness to keep them at the current level. An average cut of 5% would raise 3 billion. Together with the immediate raising of the retirement age to 65 for women and indexing to GDP as occurs in Sweden and as proposed by Tito Boeri and Agar Brugiavini at www.lavoce.info, it could produce savings that need to be quantified exactly, but let's say at least 6 billion (total pensions amount to 250 billion, more than 15% of GDP; if we cannot reduce this item by 2%, what kind of belt-tightening is it?).

8 Cutting the highest public salaries: 5 billion.
The second largest item in the public budget are total salaries, 173 billion, 11% of GDP. Greece, Spain and Ireland have reduced them; we too can do so. From an average reduction of 3% (every public agency can decide whether from lower employment or lower salaries), painful but not tragic, we can obtain 5 billion.

9 Increase in university tuition: 3 billion.
The university today is almost free, but it is above all the well-to-do who attend; the poor therefore finance the university degrees of the wealthy. There is no reason why anyone who can afford to do so should not pay for the most profitable investment of his or her life. They could perhaps choose to pay immediately or take out a loan to be paid back on the basis of their income after graduation.

10 Income tax surtax.
With the aforementioned measures, we will save nearly 38 billion without reducing growth, rather revitalizing it. There is still 22 billion (less than 1.5% of GDP) to be raised with higher revenues. Here we do not have a specific preference. Obviously, intensifying the fight against tax evasion would help, but we know from experience that the results require time and are not certain. One possibility is an income tax surtax that could be refunded if the fight against tax evasion is successful. This has two advantages. First, it is a visible tax, for which the taxpayers will want to know that their money is used wisely. Secondly, it creates a strong political incentive to take the fight against tax evasion seriously.

Italian version

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