On a recent trip to Saudi Arabia and, later, to Europe, US President Donald Trump demonstrated the impact the war industry has on the development of a given modern economy.
During this trip, contracts were signed that provide for the supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia by the United States for over 110 billion dollars.
Beyond the ethical and moral qualms that do not fit into the real economy, this agreement between two nations that hold the primacy in oil production (Saudi Arabia for reserves, the United States for production potential) essentially demonstrates the importance and the centrality of the war industry which, as President Trump recalled, represents an important sector for US employment.
While the United States holds the world record in the production and sale of arms, other nations such as Russia and China are investing in this industrial sector which also offers a factor of political pressure.
Our country has industrial excellence: the province of Brescia alone amply certifies this value with companies that compete on the world market with high-tech products.
It is clear that the production and sale of armaments for the defense of its territory is an important driving force for the national economy.
However, the concept of defense lends itself to a broader consideration which groups and encompasses sectors that are also distant from the war world but very similar in their applications. The defense of health, for example, represents one of the pillars of the European and Italian welfare which is being undermined by the continuous decreases in investments and cuts in public spending essentially linked to the growth of public debt as well as to the continuously increasing current expenditure and the inefficiencies of expenditure itself - hence in essence its scarce effectiveness and efficiency. In this sense, it should be remembered that the health system is a regional competence and absorbs about 80% of the annual budget of the Regions.
Maintaining this level of welfare and above all the expectations of a possible reduction in the level of performance and the quality of service offered to the public itself pushes many insurance companies to provide and propose forms of private welfare compensation for the probable expiry of the level of the public one.
The financial world itself, recognized as one of the sectors with greater uncertainty and economic volatility, responds to a request for greater security through insurance policies that tend to cover eighty even sometimes ninety percent of the entire invested capital.
In other words, both the world of national welfare and the financial world demonstrate how the concept of defense (or protection) understood in its fullest term and therefore also for the defense of one's health or investments represents a business for other economic operators. and financial.
The paradox of this situation is that whoever operates in this type of services benefits and investment opportunities from the inefficiency and reduction of public spending itself.
Even reaching the paradoxical situation in which the growth of perceived uncertainty increases investments in security and defense. Proof of this is the fact that the persistence of the economic crisis and the decrease in consumption correspond to an increase in bank deposits.
In other words, while in the United States health care is delegated to private insurance policies and is a clear choice (justified or not, this is not the context for evaluating it), however, this is a political choice.
For us, on the other hand, "inefficiency" represents the first or one of the first forms of livelihood for economic subjects that provide health protection services for personal or financial defense. A rather complex sector that takes advantage of the inefficiencies of the state which contributes to the proliferation of this sector thanks to its own inefficiency and unproductiveness of public spending.
On the one hand, defense understood as an "industrial system of military weapons" represents a source of income as well as of employment (eg Beretta), however the complex defense system draws its source of income from the inefficiency of the state and its public spending.
In this context, in fact, think of the companies that produce cameras which respond to a sense of insecurity that the continuous robberies in the villas in the houses as in the public establishments provoke citizenship.
In other words, we are witnessing a subcontracting of various types of defense from the State to private entities that result in the doubling of the burdens for the population as against an investment in a service or product of a private company there is no corresponding decrease in public burden imposed on the citizen.
It is also paradoxical that precisely those productions that represent the Italian culture represented by the 4As (1. Textile and footwear clothing 2. Agri-food and wine production 3. Furniture 4. Automation) are unable to obtain any regulatory protection from an Italian and European political class in the as a whole, unable to consider these products an expression of contemporary culture which as such deserves regulatory protection.
In other words, Defense represents a business, especially when it arises from the inefficiencies of the State, but rather forgets its own culture.
This culture in an economic context is expressed through complex products, a synthesis of know-how technological and industrial professional, that would deserve a clear and limpid "normative defense" as an expression of a not indifferent economic value for our country.
(photo: White House / Beretta)
