Regional income. Tuscany, Campania, and Calabria: the Five Star Movement is once again toying with the idea of subsidies.

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Those who don't die will be seen again. Or perhaps, like the basic income, it's hidden in the clauses of a contract. So, after a few votes and much worry, the Five Star Movement platform has decided: it will ally itself in Tuscany with Eugenio Giani 's Democratic Party. However, on the condition—and for a handful of "yes" votes—that the coalition commits to introducing a regional basic income . Upon closer inspection, something similar could happen in Campania. There, in a private meeting with Giuseppe Conte and communications experts ahead of the election campaign, there was talk of playing the regional basic income card (and glue) as Roberto Fico's flagship. But then, rolling further south, in Calabria there's talk of Pasquale Tridico. That is, the former president of the Italian National Institute of Social Security (INPS), head of the Five Star Movement's delegation in Brussels, and above all a Keynesian father of basic income, who is at the top of the list of potential presidential candidates. A mad desire for basic income, in short. Meanwhile, regarding Tuscany, the agreements are clear since the friendship must be long-lasting (at least in Schlein's stubborn hope).

"Supplementary measures must be adopted to the insufficient ones provided at the national level," the 5 Star Movement document states, "in order to ensure real support for Tuscan citizens in difficulty." The description is vague. But it certainly corresponds to the term "regional citizen's income." Essentially, however, when discussing this measure, the concrete objective should be to supplement the Meloni government's inclusion allowance. That is, to extend assistance to the so-called excluded categories, which largely correspond to the nineteen- to fifty-nine-year-old demographic without dependent minor children or disabled individuals. Not an income per se, therefore, like the one received by 71,142 people in Tuscany in 2022, but measures to fill—it's unknown how or with what funds (whether regional or European)—the gaps in the allowance. For now, however, the citizen's income is being shaken up and revised. It's the Movement's ace in the hole and the glue that holds together the alliance with the Democratic Party. It's the one that snatches those fateful five hundred yes votes from Conte. Wide open, whatever it takes.

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