Hacker News Reader

You don't have to imagine, it is commonplace around the world. Lots of tax revenue from countries all around the world is distributed to different areas of the country/world (obvious e.g. foreign aid). If the amount of tax isn't excessive, allows everyone to have a good standard of living, and is resulting in something positive, why not?

As a US citizen, there is no way I would stand for getting taxed to pay 100% of a home improvement bill in Canada. In hindsight, brexit is starting to look pretty damn smart

That's not the situation though. It's more like federal tax revenue from residents of California being distributed to other less well-off states. Or re-distribution payments from Alberta and Quebec to Nova Scotia and Manitoba.

Guess who has and is building up more (two very large new terminals) infractructure for unloading LNG from the sea and moving it to continental Europe (also EU funds weren't actually used).

You don't have, it's false, it's all plain old italian debt.

What's so wrong helping a neighbour? That reduces the energy costs for everyone around the world not only Italy.

You’re not “helping a neighbor” - this analogy is flawed. It’d be more correct to say “a third party with incentives that are entirely unrelated to the matter showed up at my home, placed a gun to my head and demanded I transfer a third of my checking account to him. He then took this money and used it to curry favor from another party by distributing it to his friends to do some repairs and improvements on the home of yet another person in the hopes that said person would support the same thing happening to the next guy.”

What makes him a 3rd party instead of your neighbour? If he lives near your home, you trade to with him, visit him, exchange goods and fix regional issues and even try to global issues, isn't it a good neighbour? Helping him may prove wise. I doubt there was any gun involved. I suspect a more sensible approach that involved cooperation and negotiation. Italy is the third-largest net contributor to the budget of the European Union so I don't see what made you think the deal is so one-sided. Now it has more access to gas so it may share some. This is precisly why it's good to have close relationships with your neighbours.

What makes him a 3rd party instead of your neighbour? If he lives near your home, you trade to with him, visit him, exchange goods and fix regional issues and even try to global issues, isn't it a good neighbour? Helping him may prove wise. I doubt there was any gun involved. I suspect a more sensible approach that involved cooperation and negotiation. Italy is the third-largest net contributor to the budget of the European Union so I don't see what made you think the deal is so one-sided.

I'd feel the same way if my neighbor texted me and informed me that he was making a withdrawal from my bank account to go to a nice dinner, when I was staying in for the night to save money. Being subject to taxation by foreign bureaucrats who then decide where to bestow lavish gifts sounds like nightmare fuel

Increasing the energy efficiency is not exactly a lavish gift. Maybe some materialls that went into the project were even manufactured/provided by "you".

Somehow you see your neighbour a "foreigner" that eats your dinner and steals your money! You are not a nice guy.

Without cooperation you can't acomplish much as an individal human being nor as an individual country(bigger or smaller).

Maybe your neighbour is already helping you with cheaper food or whatever he is producing since his energy bill is now lower.