Grillo, his reforms on his blog: “Working 4 days a week and taxing the richest to redistribute earnings”

From the world of work to curbing economic inequalities. These are hectic writing days for Beppe Grillo who, in the last 48 hours, has published two posts on his blog dedicated respectively to the need to reduce weekly working days and to the taxation of the super rich (thinking, for example, of an inheritance tax on assets and income) as a measure to redistribute earnings.

The 4 day work week

The founder of the 5 Star Movement takes sides first of all in favor of a consolidation of working hours in fewer days of the week. Grillo therefore seems to ride the new organizational models launched by many foreign companies and some Italian groups, such as Intesa Sanpaolo which, from 2023, has provided for the extension of working hours from Monday to Friday, for a total of 4 working days per week. “2022 – writes Grillo – was the year of the 4-day work week. The interest of companies, employees, non-profit organizations and researchers has grown all over the world”.

In a scenario where “the United Kingdom has launched a six-month pilot programme; Spain launched its own project in December and Belgian employees have obtained the right to decide whether they want to work four or five days a week”, Grillo, citing also the cases of Scotland, Wales and Portugal, the question is: “What about us?”. What will Italy do? Will it adapt to this new organizational model?.

The founder of the 5 Stars hopes so because, he recalls, “the short week offers many advantages. Working 4 days a week increases well-being, reduces environmental impact, increases efficiency and productivity, increases employment and boosts innovation, because companies invest in technology with less work”. Then citing a research by the University of Cambridge and Boston College which shows that in 33 companies that adopt the 4-day work week (for a total of 1,000 employees), no one would have wanted to go back to 5 days, Grillo concludes: ” It is time for the 4-day work week to be at the center of our political debate and not just some corporate initiative, to which we applaud.”

The tax for the richest

Citing the Oxfam report “Survival of the demanded”, published on the occasion of the last World Economic Forum in Davos, the founder of the 5 Star Movement recalls that “the richest 1 percent has taken possession of almost two thirds of all of the nearly $42 trillion worth of new wealth created since 2020, nearly double the money of the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population. And emphasizing that, as the dossier claims, “taxing the super rich and large companies is the way out of today’s overlapping crises”, Grillo reiterates that “there is a need for a systematic and far-reaching increase in the taxation of super rich to recover the gains deriving from the crisis thanks to public money and profit”. That’s because, he adds, “a decade of cuts” to the Scrooges’ taxes have “stoked inequality, with the poorest people in many countries paying higher tax rates than billionaires.”

So what is the recipe according to the 5 Stars? The inheritance tax. “Half of the world’s billionaires live in countries that do not impose inheritance taxes on direct descendants. They will pass on to their heirs a tax-free treasury of $5 trillion, more than Africa’s GDP.”

Instead, Grillo writes, “an annual wealth tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion annually, according to a new analysis by the Fight Inequality Alliance, Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam and Patriotic Millionaires. year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, fully fund shortfalls in existing humanitarian appeals, implement a 10-year plan to end hunger, support the poorest countries devastated by climate impacts, and provide universal health care and social protection to all those living in low- and middle-income countries”. Will this be enough to reopen the debate on raising taxes on the super rich?