Of Giovanni Tortelli

The purpose of the recent essay The empty cradle of civilization – At the origin of the crisis (Gondolin, Verona 2018, with preface by Matteo Salvini) of which they are authors, the current minister for the family Lorenzo Fontana and the economist Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, it is the demonstration of the direct connection between increase in birth rate, protection and encouragement of family formation and economic development, so that the economy can find itself in demographic growth and in the family «the investment of investments», as Fontana defines it in the introduction.
Objective not easy to achieve, given that the "bad masters" of the globalized economy who have followed one another in Malthus's chair have always believed that the equation according to which the gross domestic product of a country grows as the population decreases is true: when the population grows too much, individuals of the same species compete with each other for the exploitation of available resources: hence the presumed need for control (or inhibition) of births.
According to the Authors, nothing could be more wrong; in fact, it is enough to look at the results of the Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) who by increasing the population have become rich, while the West, diminuendola, he became impoverished.
But why - the inexperienced reader may ask - is it really necessary to restore this relationship of direct proportion between population increase and economic growth? Because – replies Gotti Tedeschi – it is the increase in the birth rate that causes the formation of the family and the family produces wealth, indeed it is the first aggregate of society that produces wealth.
The family is so important that it holds well for itself alone «four economic souls»: produces income, produces savings, produces investments and redistributes income within it. The economic value of the family arises from the interest - which is a stimulus and commitment - to pursue responsible actions aimed at its own sustenance. In short, it is the family that is the primary driver of growth in wealth and for this reason alone "it deserves the Nobel Prize for Economics".
After all, the validity of this statement can also be derived on the contrary. In fact, the collapse of the population produces growing fixed costs for pensions and healthcare, it causes the productivity of an entire country to decrease due to the aging of the population, inhibits the growth of savings because fewer families are formed who are forced to save for their children e, In the end, induce al «consumerism», which is a surrogate resource of wealth that inflates the GDP. of a country experiencing demographic decline. In other words, it is the illusion of an aging country to maintain its production capacity unchanged.
What if someone objects, rightly so, that nowadays it is almost impossible to start a family given the difficulties, especially of an economic and fiscal nature, Gotti Tedeschi replies that it is today, Yes, difficult to start a family, but precisely because from the Seventies onwards the path of not having children was chosen: that is, since specialist economic studies on the one hand and very high-level political will on the other decided it (see «Kissinger Report» of 1974 which were followed slavishly by decisions by international organizations and agencies at every level).
The essay is full of references and ideas that are extremely current and pertinent and it is certainly not possible to list them all here: from Fontana's precise reconstruction of the paths of the most recent Italian politics, simply aberrant when it comes to the issues of birth and family, al Jobs Act which has made family work more precarious, to the various theories para- o pseudo- scientific studies that do not hide anti-family prejudices and anti-birthrate designs in an even broader panorama which - as Gotti Tedeschi illustrates - allows us to glimpse the creation of a real «new world order» which refers to precise ethical principles of a Gnostic nature, relativistic, even if not nihilistic: gender theory (che sostituisce il «male and female he created them" Of Gen. 1, 27); Malthusian theory (che sostituisce il «grow and multiply" Of Gen. 1, 28); environmentalist theories that see man as a destroyer of nature (che sostituisce «subjugate and dominate every living being" Of Gen. 1, 28).
The authors do not keep quiet about the fact that the road to a reversal of values ​​is extremely uphill because here it is a question of reversing, with the economy, even consciences, in a panorama that returns to being – therefore – that of the eternal struggle between immanentism and metaphysics.
«A country that doesn't have children has no future» says Salvini in his preface, and in the meantime he captures exactly the first practical crux of the issue when he indicates the desire for a tax reform that favors families, especially the numerous ones (perhaps with the introduction of the much desired family quotient), and you don't penalize them like short-sighted politics, sterile, atheist and materialist has done so far with a fiscalism to the person.
It would already be a good first and significant step towards ever greater recognition of the family that opens up to life and brings children into the world. And from here start again in every direction.
I conclude. For its qualities - and above all for the remarkable fact that Fontana and Gotti Tedeschi managed to demonstrate the "rationality" of moral laws, and therefore the "necessity" of an economy linked to morality, therefore of an economy in search of a truth that is not just a scientific truth divorced from man - I believe that this essay could be suitable for expert readers, so that they open their eyes beyond routine, as for the less experienced and teenagers starting university studies (of any kind), often confused by a single thought, massifying and homogenizing, to help them direct their young conscience towards a healthy path of seeking the truth.