European Union is crossing a delicate phase of rethinking caused by many factors. In this problematic context a comparative and questionnaire survey "In and Out European Union" has been carried out on three groups of University's students, attending socio-economics courses, from three countries of European Union (Italy, Poland, Romania) testing their level of approval on EU activity, their proposals for bettering EU policy, their opinions on a possible EU enlargement to other European and non-European countries, on migration policies, on Brexit. The results of the research can be briefly summarized. The attitude of students towards EU activity is positive, despite some critical observations referred specially to issues concerning their future. Most students disagree with Brexit, the most students want EU to extend only to European countries. Most students want EU to be more restrictive towards migrants and refugees.

No abstract

L’articolo analizza il pensiero economico-sociale di Giuseppe Toniolo (1845 - 1918), a partire dal libro di Mons. Domenico Sorrentino, Vescovo di Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino e di Foligno, su “Economia umana. La lezione e la profezia di Giuseppe Toniolo: una rilettura sistematica”, Vita e Pensiero, Milano, 2021. Giuseppe Toniolo, economista e sociologo, andando controcorrente rispetto al mainstream del suo tempo, ha concepito l’economia come una scienza sociale che mette al centro la persona in quanto scienza umanizzata grazie alla sua contaminazione con la spiritualità e l’etica sociale cattolica. L’articolo si intitola “Giuseppe Toniolo Maestro e Profeta” perché mette in luce l’esempio di vita e la coraggiosa lezione di pensiero di questo studioso riconducibile alla scuola etico-giuridica dell’economia nonché l’eredità del suo magistero ancora valida ai nostri giorni.

The paper thematizes the problematic relationship between economy and happiness covered by economist Robert Michels (1876-1936) in his book “The Economics of Happiness” written in 1918. In this book Michels, as a true frontier scholar, provides, well in advance of the acquisitions of the modern “science of happiness”, an interdisciplinary reading of the different determinants of happiness and of their interactions, courageously refuting the monistic and reductionist paradigm of neoclassical economy dominant in his epoch. The hedonistic conception of happiness conceived by Michels echoes that formulated by Jeremy Bentham, but Michels, unlike the Utilitarians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gives it an unexpected twist, by postulating heretically that happiness is the ultimate goal of economy and that wealth is only a means to achieve it. In establishing the primacy of happiness as the main purpose of economic activity, Michels follows in the footsteps of Neapolitan and Milanese Civil Economists of Enlightenment with whom he had other theoretical points of consonance which the paper highlights. However Michels’ conception of happiness differs from Civil Economists’ notion because it is primarily based on individual pleasure and not on relational goods, because it is disconnected from those components of gratuitousness which are immanent to sincere relational goods, because it is detached from the search for Common Good. Finally the paper illustrates the multidimensional and innovative public policies which Michels suggests for the achievement of happiness by invoking a wide range of integrated interventions to be carried out by the State and by the workers’ unions. Keywords: Happiness Economics, Benthamian Utilitarianism, Civil Economy