Italy's choice: Listen to Nitti or Cippi(co)

In the reading from a few nights ago, we were presented an argument for why Fascism was good for Italy and another for why it was bad. This is a wonderful example of how abusing statistics can lead to hugely misleading "facts."

There were two primary sectors of each argument: freedom and the economic (dis)advantages. Cippico's presentation of the progress made through the increases in exports/work-efficiency of Italy during the change to fascism. However, in his statistical analysis, he uses Italian currency as his standard--instead of the gold standard--and thus, allows an incredible amount of twisting. According to him, there was a rise from 2,758,333,333 lire per 4 months in 1921, to 5,350,000,000 lire in the "first 4 months alone."This can be accounted for in many ways, most likely because of massive inflation, which often accompany dictatorships (~see Russia or/and general theory of economics of autocracies p.240) Then, he introduces the amount of imports into Italy--to show world-wide economic presence, considering a still increasing GDI--as 17,266,000,000 in 1921 increasing to 19,387,000,000 ____. He chooses to leave out any form of measurement...

While what Cippico presents looks promising, in reality it only does so on paper. With Nitti's analysis, we see what truly is happening within Italy's economic sector. There was a massive increase of deficit (of Italian business) from 643 million gold pounds in 1924 to 1259 million in 1927. The domestic business's "real decline is nearly 50 per cent."

There are countless more points of illusion brought by Cippico, later disillusioned by Nitti, but these seem to be enough for now. Gogo Italian fascism and its benefits!