At the origin of the crisis

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. Read More