Taxes and Justice
By Luigino Bruni
Published on Cittanuova.it on 18/03/2010
Once again, we speak again about fiscal reform and the fight against tax evasion, a disease not only of the fiscal system but of all civil life as it undermines the roots of the "social pact" between citizens. Today, in a mo...
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By Luigino Bruni
Published on Cittanuova.it on 18/03/2010
Once again, we speak again about fiscal reform and the fight against tax evasion, a disease not only of the fiscal system but of all civil life as it undermines the roots of the "social pact" between citizens. Today, in a modern democracy, we should often remember the logic of taxation. Taxes (and levies) have three goals: they serve to redistribute income and wealth from the rich to the poor; they are an instrument to encourage the consumption of meritorious goods (art, education, culture...); and finally they serve to finance public goods, like streets, security or health.
[fulltext] => All three of these functions make sense within a society that feels itself linked by a pact, as it has a collective dimension which is greater than a sum of contracts and individual and private actions. Let´s think, for example, of public goods: if they cost 1000 and there are 100 of us paying our taxes, each one of us contributes 10 on average. But if we are 100 citizens and only 50 of these pay their taxes, whoever contributes pays 20, for themselves and for their "wily" co-citizens. That is why the social pact is undermined when tax evasion exceeds a critical threshold. It breaks the trust that keeps people and any political community together.
When We talk about the scandal of fiscal paradises - "places" where recycled money often travels, oozing with violence and blood - we should remember that fiscal purgatories also exist. They are where people who, even due to the sly person´s paradise, find themselves under too much unjust and unsustainable fiscal pressure. It´s a purgatory that transforms itself into hell when an entrepreneur that lives legally in sectors of high fiscal evasion is forced to close his business. The fiscal culture changes then over the long run, with the fatiguing art of daily virtuous actions, starting in school. It is not easy to answer a child who asks, "why do fiscal paradises exist?" but we can always wish him that his generation be the first to eliminate this collective shame.
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[text] => Taxes and Justice
By Luigino Bruni
Published on Cittanuova.it on 18/03/2010
Once again, we speak again about fiscal reform and the fight against tax evasion, a disease not only of the fiscal system but of all civil life as it undermines the roots of the "social pact" between citizens. Today, in a modern democracy, we should often remember the logic of taxation. Taxes (and levies) have three goals: they serve to redistribute income and wealth from the rich to the poor; they are an instrument to encourage the consumption of meritorious goods (art, education, culture...); and finally they serve to finance public goods, like streets, security or health.
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At first, the Strali had arrived at the mayor´s office in Adro (Brescia), who had decided that children whose families had not settled accounts would not be allowed to eat the school lunch. Then, when an (initially) anonymous entrepreneur paid the debt so that these faultless children would not go with an empty stomach, the author of this magnificant gesture fell under a barrage of fire. People said that it is too easy these days for someone who wants to be clever to take advantage of others´generosity. Nearly 200 families had announced that they would not pay the school tax as a sign of protest. Plus, the mayor declared to the Corriera della Sera that Silvano Lancini - the name of the entrepreneur - had made a "political act", made to favor the opposition. Whether authentic generosity or a calculated move, this episode centers on the value and role of gratuitousness in the context of citizenship. We spoke with Luigino Bruni, professor of economy at the university of Milano-Bicocca and author of a book written specifically on this topic (The Price of Gratuitousness, Cittá Nuova).
Florence, 28 June, San Lorenzo Church. In the rooms below the church, the 
It is not easy to understand what is really happening in the growing phenomenon of the so-called sharing economy. Also because some very different experiences, sometimes too many are incorporated in this expression.
In large enterprises of our day the attention paid to the management of emotions is growing quickly. Economic organizations are beginning to feel instinctively that we are in a profound anthropological transformation, and so they try, as much as they can, to find the solutions. Because of its ability to anticipate the needs and desires, capitalism is now realizing that in our time there is an ocean of loneliness, famine for attention and tenderness, lack of respect and recognition as well as desire to be seen and beloved, in an unprecedented and immense measure. And it is gearing up to meet even this 'demand' for new markets.
That clock tower on Amatrice church indicating 3.36 is a powerful image for what happened this night. That minute was the last minute for many victims, it will be a minute forever remembered because it is written in the flesh and hearts of their families. And it will be remembered by our country, whose recent history is also a series of clocks stopped forever by the violence of men and of the earth.
I was in London, pursuing economic studies when in the morning of 8th May 1998 Chiara Lubich reached me on my house phone. Even if I had been member of her movement since the age of 15 – this is the great adventure of my life – I had never spoken to her personally. I can still remember how moved and surprised I was, but above all I remember her words: ‘Would you like to help me to attain scientific dignity to the Economy of Communion?’ The she added that on her return from Brazil, seven years after the launch of the EoC she understood that unless there developed an economic thought to accompany the entrepreneurs, the EoC would never really take off. I said yes, I left London for Rome and started working with her and many other fellows – and it all contributed to giving a bit of that scientific dignity to the life we all wanted to live then and now. I understood that life has priority, but thoughts and theory are also life and when they are not there, practice becomes poor and short lived.
Returning from Paris, from a summer school on the Economy of Communion, flying up in the sky above Europe I am thinking about our capitalism. Perhaps because in France there is a newly appointed minister of economics, perhaps because I have just greeted fifty young people who are fascinated by a more fraternal and inclusive economy. Or perhaps because my heart goes out to too many aircrafts that are in the wrong, flying over many war-ravaged lands; I cannot help thinking of our market economy, our crises, the many Africans and North Africans I've seen in the subways of Paris and its existential, economic and cultural peripheries. 
about this flight as I remember the young people from different countries of the world that I have just left, with some nostalgia.
In our hedonistic, consumeristic, and finance centric culture, love may be the most used and worn out word. However, Benedict XVI made it the core of his social doctrine. Deus Caritas est and Caritas in Veritate, are, respectively, his first and last encyclicals.
The economy has extreme need of resurrection. Every resurrection is preceded and prepared by a crisis, by a passage or change: one does not resurrect if first, in some way, one does not die. In the economic system that we have produced in this last century there is, in fact, something that is clearly dying out, but there is also something new which is emerging on the horizon, even if we need “eyes of resurrection” to be able to see it, and then to recognize it for what it really is; that is, the dawn of a new day.
There is an overwhelming mass of great injustice toward the elderly. Until a few decades ago the traditional structure of Western society was based on a rule of reciprocity: as adults they gave assistance to our parents, and once they themselves became older they would receive care from their children (who in turn had received care from their parents during their childhood and youth). And the balance between "giving" and "receiving" care broke even. All this then was a political and social representation in the pension system, where the pension received by an elderly was not his savings as a young man, but a sort of return and appreciation of the young people towards them.
From time to time, in recent years, the market rekindles the debate on its limits. We return to wonder whether it is right, opportune and possible to create official and transparent markets for organ trafficking, legalizing commercial surrogacy, legalizing prostitution, etc., issues that for many generate anger and rejection.
The financial crisis in Ireland, following that of Greece, does nothing but remind us that the West has gone too far into debt. The rescue of many banks and businesses last year, following the crisis, led especially to a shift of debt from the private to the public sector.