The Wednesday Post 1: Without work we go mad

"Resilience" and toughness are no longer optional luxuries

What’s the one biggest problem of living in our new “socially distanced” world? Work. I think it’s work - or I should say our inability to work.

What all this has brought home to me is how much of our emotional, psychological and social lives are wrapped around our work. Work itself, not merely the money it brings in - is absolutely essential, not just to keep our stomachs full and not even only for the immediate psychological benefits of social connection and interaction.

Without work - your voluntary actions that contribute to the good of the larger society - we go mad. Loss of work is a brutal form of isolation. Having work wrenched away from us by force on a global scale is a totalitarian crime against humanity.

Without work, we lose our sense of having a slot, a place that is uniquely ours in our social system, of being part of a community working toward a mutually beneficial future, of being a valuable or even being a real person. Deprived of it long enough and we lose our sense of self, our identity and finally our sense of belonging to reality at all.

We’re transfixed by all the horror stories of people losing their livelihoods, their businesses and even their homes as a result of lockdowns. There continues to be vague promises of direct assistance - tax-derived cash handouts - from governments. But this seems extremely implausible, even as a short-term stopgap. How is the US government (to say nothing of the rest of the world) going to afford handouts in the face of a business loss rate reported at 22%?

And that’s the First world. How’s the “Second World” doing?

In Italy it’s been especially bad, with the government changing hands in the middle of the whole business. Giuseppe Conte, the last unelected figurehead was about to be lynched, so they had to get another EU puppet in place fast, before the constitution kicked back in and they were forced to face the pitchforks and torches-ready public in an election, and showing itself completely incapable of responding even minimally intelligently to the sudden financial and economic catastrophe they created.

I am one of those who has been vocal about the damage being done by lockdowns in response to Covid. I live about 130 miles from the first European outbreak, in a small village near Bergamo. A year ago, I watched in real fear as the virus “broke quarantine” in city after city, the red zones on the map spreading outward. And the government reacted with the western world’s first, most restrictive and longest lockdown. The reality of being confined to my home by government dictate was deeply frightening. We’ve been in and out of lockdowns ever since as (possibly mythical) “waves” have come back.

We had been told it would be only for “a few weeks” or at most, a couple of months in certain areas and it seemed likely that this was going to be the case. Believing there was a serious and potentially catastrophic Thing happening, and Italians being generally decent and kindly people, most wanted to do whatever they could to help. They accepted (temporary) lockdowns because of their good will and the government’s promise that it would be a short-term remedy and that financial support would be made available. (Though Italians are all savvy enough not to take that last bit too seriously.) They sang to each other on the balconies and reassured each other with hand painted signs that said, “Andra’ Tutto Bene” - “Everything will be all right.”

And it did appear to be working; the number of new infections dropped dramatically immediately after the national lockdown and in a few months had dropped to zero. The curve had been flattened. Yay! We won! We can all get back to life now, right?

LOLNope!

Andra’ NON tutto bene: “I'm ashamed to be here. But otherwise I would have nothing to eat.”

And that’s when everything started to get really frightening, when we started to see people being obviously deliberately terrorized and manipulated by media, and later bullied by cops. All this prompted by a government that was in complete chaos, ignoring the constitution and brazenly abusing their power to rule “by decree” with new “DPCMs” commanding business closures and travel restrictions, breaking promises every time, arriving every couple of weeks. Authoritarianism, always a threat in European societies, was blossoming before our eyes into the poisonous flower of totalitarianism - with the spores of fear, distrust, confusion and growing anger flowing freely everywhere.

I’ll let y’all translate this one.

Since then, the slogan, coined by Rome’s criminally incompetent mayor, Virginia Raggi, has become a darkly ironic catchphrase, appearing in ferociously sarcastic memes about the economic catastrophe created by government.

Some of which are actually funny.

Considerably less funny are the videos being posted to social media of very long lines for food banks and soup kitchens, formerly populated mostly by single men and now made up of housewives with children in tow (schools are mostly closed) and elderly people.

The long lines of Milan's 'new Covid poor'

"I'm ashamed to be here. But otherwise I would have nothing to eat," said Giovanni Altieri, 60, who has been coming every day since the nightclub where he worked was shut under virus regulations.

He misses work - the sense of purpose and camaraderie. "I like the contact with people, I had a good salary, but I'm at rock bottom here. I have no income and live off my savings," he told AFP.

Every day, 3,500 people turn up at the two distribution points run in Milan by the charity, which hands out surplus food it receives from a range of organisations, as well as through individual donations.

Milan is the centre of Italy's industrial north and one of the richest cities in Europe. But as the pandemic has battered the country, poverty rates have soared, even here.

The national statistical agency, ISTAT reported this week that poverty has skyrocketed, all the economic benefits of Salvini’s brief tenure are erased.

ISTAT yesterday released the preliminary estimates of absolute poverty for the year 2020 and the signs are not encouraging: last year, families in absolute poverty exceeded the 2 million threshold (7.7% of the total, from 6.4 % in 2019, + 335 thousand) for a total number of individuals equal to approximately 5.6 million (9.4% from 7.7%, i.e. over 1 million more than the previous year).

The incidence of absolute poverty increased above all among households with an employed reference person (7.3% from 5.5% in 2019). This is over 955 thousand families in total, 227 thousand more families than in 2019. Among the latter, more than half have a worker or assimilated as a reference person (the incidence goes from 10.2 to 13.3%), in addition one fifth a self-employed worker (from 5.2% to 7.6%).

Also from the preliminary data of the Statistical Institute comes the confirmation that also in this field the health emergency has made its heavy effects felt, eliminating the improvements recorded in 2019. After four consecutive years of increase, they had in fact reduced significantly the number and share of families (and individuals) in absolute poverty, while remaining on values ​​much higher than those prior to the crisis that began in 2008, when the incidence of absolute family poverty was less than 4% and the individual one was around 3%. Therefore, according to the preliminary estimates of 2020, absolute poverty reaches, in Italy, the highest values ​​since 2005 (i.e. since the time series for this indicator is available).

As of this writing, the government - with it’s new, EU-approved unelected figurehead, Mario Draghi - is continuing every policy of the Conte gang (who stole power from the government that was actually elected, by staging a kind of parliamentary coup, of dubious legality). The Italian people rage helplessly while they are dragged under; the country is cowed, impoverished, brutalised and literally gagged.

Government handouts have been slow, rare and paltry - as they always are. There have been marches and demonstrations by small business owners; all for nothing. Lockdowns, more lockdowns and only lockdowns are the still government’s only response. I haven’t checked recently but I think about 117,000 people have been claimed to have died of Covid in Italy since we started. Who even knows for sure if these numbers even vaguely represent reality - even the minimal trust Italians had in their institutions has totally vanished. I don’t know if there will ever be a way of calculating how many have died of missed cancer and heart disease screenings and treatments, and suicides (which was already a pretty big deal in Italy, many will be surprised to hear) over losses of livelihood, dignity and hope.

Yesterday I saw a video of a woman - the owner of a hair dressing salon who employed five people, break down in hysterics, because the police had ordered her to close her business again, with a threat of fines. She had no more money in the bank. Government promises of cash handouts had availed nothing or were hopelessly bogged in bureaucracy. She had no food in the house for her family. Her extended family lived far away and were also business-owners-without-businesses. She could probably have had food from a local food bank. But if we ask why then she was having hysterics in the street, as though merely eating were sufficient for life, we’ve failed to understand what’s happening. She needs to work.

The problem isn’t the people; it’s a deeply corrupt ruling class completely divorced from reality and indifferent to the suffering they cause. Sounds familiar.

Italy isn’t a very happy land and a lot of it is about work

And this is all compounding a situation in which it has always been very difficult even to make a living. The big switch in this country at the end of World War II from a mainly agricultural to an industrialised “modern” economy - complete with northern-style labour-for-cash working lives, never did quite work out as advertised.

Some years ago, one friendly colleague - a publisher of a traditionalist Catholic newspaper, asked me if I would be interested in writing for him. He was looking to expand his English language content and maybe expand his readership in the Anglo nations. I said I’d be happy to contribute, and asked what his rates were. He said, “Forty US dollars per piece.” Seeing my face he hastily added, “If you write ten pieces I can give you 400 Euros every month!” I had to explain that that was the price I got for two pieces at the US paper I already wrote for, and that I simply could not afford to put in the time it would take to produce quality, well-researched work for that price. It would be a fast path to starvation; US$ 40 won’t buy a week’s worth of groceries. We talked a bit more about it, but in the end had to agree that he couldn’t afford me.

It was frustrating because I liked him and his publication, and said this was a big reason why Italy wasn’t ever going to get itself sorted out; “Italians just don’t get paid for the work they do. And they’ve stopped expecting to be, and this has left them in a national condition of permanent despair and hopelessness. It’s the reason nothing ever gets solved, nothing gets built, nothing gets repaired, nothing moves forward in this country.” He agreed and added sadly, “And it’s the reason all the brightest young people leave.”

Readers’ views: Is Italy really one of the worst countries to move to?

Italy came close to last in a recent survey of expat life around the world. Is life as a foreigner here really all that bad? We asked our readers what you thought.

“Nothing seems to be straightforward and no one seems to know exactly how things are supposed to be done. Bureaucracy is illogic and byzantine and would stop anyone from doing anything.

“This is the place where you still have to personally go to a physical office to get your bills sorted (or send a fax. In 2019!), or where you might have problems paying by card. And even in cash since the ATMs dispense mostly €50 notes that no shop would happily accept. The working ethic is terrible, people seem to work 12 hours a day while it's mostly wasting time due to a basic lack of organization which creates a domino effect of 'being late'.”

The Anglosassone nations were the real inheritors of the Protestant work ethic that created the Industrial Revolution. We got the work-for-pay, transactional, factory mindset right from the start in the early 18th century. It’s become second nature to us, and no one alive has even a second-hand memory of their peasant roots and the totally different mindset about work it created.

Italy was only confronted - again by government fiat - with this transactional, Lockean mindset after World War II, when the Anglo nations rebuilt their country in a new style. Agricultural practices in the Valnerina - where Norcia is - were only “modernised” (that is, mechanised) in 1950. And that not all together successfully.

This video was taken on the last train journey on the short-lived Spoleto-Norcia line in 1968. At the end you will see that the train passes a team of oxen pulling a cart, donkeys loaded up with hay in the farm land at the bottom of the valley, and a horse drawn carriage meets the train at the station. This wasn’t the 19th century. I was two years old when it was made.

Italian culture (in reality hundreds of local mini-cultures) was never really part of the modern world, which is why people from the 1st World Anglo nations have such a hard time understanding them. In Italy your job, even if you’re a business owner, is much less about making money than it is about being part of life, having a slot in the community where you know you are needed and valued. The cliche, “In Italy you don’t live to work; you work to live,” is a bedrock cultural principle.

Despite the chaos and disorder, somehow, mostly by sticking with family and local community and keeping expectations low, Italy has managed to bumble along - mostly in spite of government. Not smoothly, not easily, but generally. The people who were working effectively, the people who were having children, keeping businesses alive, the people who had a mindset of civic responsibility, pretty much kept things going for everyone.

Until 2020; the year governments around the world colluded to take away the right to work… from everyone, slackers and industrious alike.

Covid and lockdowns and the new paradigm: no such thing as a right to work

All of this is just a snapshot - with uniquely Italian accents - of what is happening right now around the world. We don’t need to discuss it too much more. We’ve certainly become aware that the “globalist” culture had quite a lot of built-in fragilities. But I’m not sure anyone really could have anticipated a day when the Globalist machine would not only cease entirely, but would force everyone else to stop. We are seeing now something unique in human history: a global work stoppage. And at the same time, governments that are nearly all devoted globalists somehow continuing to promise that everyone will be fed and housed - like animals in a zoo. Like prisoners.

Among the proposals bandied about in the last year is the “Minimum Guaranteed Income” or the “Universal Basic Income”. You won’t have to work; the government will just give you money for staying home and doing nothing. Our now openly socialistic political betters - in whose philosophical universe there is no such thing as human freedom or agency - are proposing that there is simply no such thing, and never has been, as a right to work. Instead, they say, we will like much better the “right to be kept.”

But will we? The psychological evidence is overwhelmingly against the idea that people can simply sit and be passive, not work, not contribute, do nothing and be fed, and not go completely insane. Dear Lord, even convicted criminals in prisons are allowed to work.

One of the trial balloons for the Universal Basic Income (UBI) so beloved of Pope Francis and socialists in general, happened in the UK a few years ago, called “Universal Credit”.

The Lancet tells us that the psychological outcomes have been less than encouraging:

Universal Credit replaces six welfare benefits covering housing and living costs for people facing adversity, such as unemployment, disabilities, and low-paid employment. It was introduced at different times in different parts of the UK, starting in the northwest of England in April, 2013, and was implemented in stages, initially affecting unemployed individuals and then people in work who were receiving tax credits. By the end of 2018, all parts of the UK had introduced Universal Credit for unemployed people and 1·6 million people were receiving Universal Credit, including 72·9% of all unemployed people in the UK and 1·8% of all employed people

Universal Credit introduced various features that differed from previous benefit schemes, including a fully digitised service, paying benefits directly to claimants, paying monthly in arrears rather than prospectively each week, increased conditionality, and reduced amounts paid to some claimant groups.

Universal Credit was intended to provide greater incentives for claimants to enter employment and to ensure that the receipt of benefits “maximises claimants' responsibility and self-sufficiency” and that it mimics work and receipt of a salary (ie, by paying claimants monthly in arrears and paying all monies direct to the claimant).

They point to at least one big problem: if you’re totally in thrall to a bureaucracy, you’re literally living in fear of your life. The Lancet puts it in polite, clinical language: “increased conditionality” but it boils down to the reality that government - an inhuman, machine like entity you will never meet and who is not accountable to you - decides for you what you must do in order to continue to be fed. The implicit threat is constant. The message behind welfare for its victims is always the same: “You’re at rock bottom. There’s nowhere to go after this. Do as you’re told or you die.” It’s a Kafkaesque condition more or less precisely designed to destroy the human psyche; we are not created for that kind of radical dependence, even if it “works” materially. (And it never does.)

…Long delays in payments and increased use of sanctions whereby claimants lose part or all of their benefits for not meeting conditions, such as looking for work. There have been anecdotal reports that the policy has increased food bank usage, mental health difficulties amongst claimants, and consultations in general practices.

 Several qualitative studies have concluded that Universal Credit adversely affected claimants' financial security, driving people further into poverty and food insecurity, worsening physical and mental health, and negatively affecting their social and family lives and employment prospects. They found that managing the Universal Credit claims process and increased conditionality, combined with the threat of sanctions, exacerbated long-term health conditions and negatively affected participants' mental health such that some had considered suicide.

Psychologists will tell you that people don’t consider suicide when they’re depressed. They consider it when they feel trapped.

And this is what they want to do To. The. Whole. World.

Work - by its nature an action of human agency, freedom and will - builds up not only the social body but the individual human soul. Welfare - which is what the Covid-Globalists are proposing - is a degrading slavery that will destroy our entire civilisation. In fact, it nearly has already.

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