In 1914, Luigi Einaudi, one of the most eminent Italian economists, stated that a government supported by social consensus would be able to meet some additional expenses (even for a new war) by capital levy, or other additional taxes, while a politically weak government would prefer to issue debt. This statement joins the Italian fiscal school doctrine and the elitist tradition of the Machiavellians with Mosca, Pareto and Michels. Taxation immediately submits taxpayers to a lump sum to cover all fees, while debt defers their payments. Debt has other advantages too: first, it provides immediate cash; second, it offers a profitable asset to holders; third, it allows the state to amortize its own liabilities with delaying charges on the taxpayers which are charged according to the fiscal rules of the moment. In an indebted state, any change in its fiscal system can allow the transfer of interest payments onto other shoulders. In this way, a break in the Ricardian equivalence between tax and debt occurs. Then, governments can manage their fiscal choices in order to handle social consensus. This device can benefit those social groups which are able to influence the ruling class to avoid all or part of their fiscal burden. Public debt turns into a fiscal device which gradually transfers incomes from those who should bear taxes to other taxpayers who should not have to pay them. In addition, future taxpayers would pay debt service (interest plus principal) to state creditors. If there are few overlaps between those taxpayers and those creditors, then there is a distributive effect. In these cases, the fiscal illusion created by debts is realized: security holders have actually become richer than before and initial taxpayers have transferred the burden of debt (all or at least a part of its amount) onto others. Through debt, governments modify distributive mechanisms; in fact taxpayers and security holders are only slowly aware of some income transfers and they can maintain their own social consensus towards government and political institutions. In this way the state can preserve its own fiscal legitimacy.