State solidarity with our taxes

Sergio Recosa He was one of the kindest, kindest, most knowledgeable and intellectually honest people Italy has ever seen. It is precisely this stature, combined with natural gentleness, that allowed him to treat even sensitive and controversial topics with exemplary clarity and clarity.

Marco Panella He used to repeat that it was often necessary to risk unpopularity in order to avoid the worse danger of becoming unpopular. One of the “slippery” areas where this can happen is that of “solidarity,” a topic about which everyone has their own concept: everything is respected, until some of them take over and become a “brotherhood and solidarity of the state.” , imposed by law.

In a crackling booklet The Perils of Solidarity – Letters on the Potion of Virtue (Rizzoli, 1993), Ricosa addresses, in a provocative way, the sensitive topic of those who want to impose themselves on themselves. The concept of solidarity“, effectively transforming virtue into injustice: “The religions of universal brotherhood, of which Marxism is the alternative […] They are many and conflicting, although they always herald, in one way or another, the annihilation of the self and the individual, in favor of the group and the species. [Ibid]

Recosa reminded us that it is written in the Gospels to love your neighbor as yourself, but no more! Now we see that too often the principle “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you” is reversed into “Do to others what I would have them do to me.” All too often, ironically, we find ourselves confronted by hordes of well-meaning people who want our best at any cost, even at the cost of ruining our lives.

To defend oneself from such people, Ricosa suggests adopting an old and safe remedy: “Distancing yourself is an art that must be cultivated without arrogance, but with careful determination when you seem to smell the mafia, the sub-government, or even just a solidarity clique. You have to know how to say it.” “No” at the appropriate time. However, there is a type of solidarity that does not allow this, and unfortunately it is the prevailing type. I am talking about Solidarity is a duty under the law“, imposed by demagogic politicians, paid for by defenseless taxpayers, and enjoyed mostly by public bureaucrats, and invented in its modern form by Bismarck, whose ideal was to turn Prussia into one huge barracks, treating civilians like soldiers.” [Ibid].

Solidarity presupposes ethical considerations that must be managed in the context of freedom, the freedom to give and receive. When we turn to taxation (including related taxes), we enter a minefield, where good intentions can backfire.

This is the dilemma of the welfare state: “Moral means freedom. The moral value of compulsory, rather than free, solidarity is null. The economic value, understood as a cost, is too high. The theoretical assumption is that the rich pay the poor. The practical result is that the poor, more often than not, They pay for the rich, one might imagine. The tax collector, the highwayman who was never the Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest, is today, in Italy and elsewhere, the thieving cover of the kingdom of identity: and I am referring to the classic comic strips of Parker and Hart. [Ibid]

Fabrizio Bonali, September 14, 2023