In 2022, Italian annual inflation reached 8.7%, the largest increase since the mid-1980s. The rise in consumer prices in our country, as well as in other Western economies, is mainly due to the increase in energy prices. In Italy, economic policies to tackle inflation have been limited to subsidies for businesses and households. Policies did not address the structural causes rooted in our dependence on gas and oil imports, in inefficient energy markets, and in the absence of an industrial policy favouring production adjustments and ecological transition. Inflation brings back the distributional conflict produced by rising prices and the need for an incomes policy centred on the protection of real wages.