Sette luoghi comuni sull'economia

[Autom. eng. transl.] They are presented as unquestionable and repeated axioms as mantra. They are in the words of politicians, journalists and economists. But they are (often) wrong or (in part) misleading. Andrea Boitani selects and dismantles seven clichés about the economy which, translated into economic policies, heavily influence our lives. "The problem is the euro", "it is all the fault of the banks", "reforms must be done", "central banks think only of inflation" ... Who has not read or listened to these phrases many times in newspapers, in talks show, within national and international institutions? It is a series of clichés that, uncritically repeated, become mantras, unquestionable axioms, univocal, scientific truths. Federico Caffè argued that "freeing oneself from the suggestion of statements that end up being accepted simply because they are repeated is not an easy thing". The end of the book is precisely this: to dismantle, explain and free oneself from seven common places on the contemporary economy. We will discover that each of them contains elements of truth, but to underline only these elements or to hide those that contradict them leads to the construction of an insidious ideology. An ideology that - put into practice before and especially after the outbreak of the great crisis of 2008 - has done much damage: more unemployment and for more time than was inevitable; less growth than was possible; more poverty and inequality than is morally acceptable; less inflation than was economically viable. Millions of people have suffered from this. It was not destiny: it could have been avoided, if only we had acted differently than some common places pushed us and still push us to do.