«The age of retirement is more linked to the work done»- Corriere.it

The planet called Inps has two access doors. It is not easy to get into its mechanisms. Or rather it wasn’t. It is partly due to technology, to that digital identity that allows over 30 million Italians to have relations with the state administration more simply; a little more unfortunately to that tragedy called Covid which brought the State and its INPS arm closer to the citizens. And so, between bonuses, concessions, assistance, Naspi for those who have lost their jobs, up to those 16 million Italians who receive a pension check every month, in fact the institute has moved away from being a moloch to be climbed with blows of queues in busy offices and unresponsive call centres. Of course, that acronym, Inps, is synonymous with pension. Which is the other side of the coin of work. And here too, the double face of an institution that represents one of the country’s great assets emerges.

A few numbers to understand its scope. In the 2021 budget, INPS collected 237 billion in contributions, 145 euros in transfers from the state, 4.5 billion in minor revenues. 386.4 billion in and 384.8 out. Just to have a yardstick, all Italian public spending is equal to about 814 billion. As can be understood from the figures that are so important for the State and so equally important for citizens in terms of assistance and pensions, to enter INPS you can choose to enter the door of the building in via Ciro il Grande at Eur. Rationalist architecture, itself a symbol of the institution’s operation and functionality. Understanding how our life, of our young people as well as workers or pensioners, of businesses is intertwined with the assistance that INPS gives to citizens. Or you can enter from that neoclassical jewel that bears the name of the family that bought it: Palazzo Wedekind. An address that says a lot: Piazza Colonna, the same as Palazzo Chigi, the seat of government. An almost plastic demonstration of how much the vicissitudes of a decisive piece for the functioning of the state are intertwined with politics. For reforms in the process of being reformed such as the basic income, or for that scandal that is still costing us and which prevents us from being closer to young people which is called “baby pensions”. From that large terrace on the noble floor overlooking the square, the INPS representative office, one looks closely at what happens in the “Palace” par excellence. It is easy to do it from Piazza Colonna because its president has seen his path intertwine with that of Palazzo Chigi.

Pasquale Tridico is the inventor and theorist of basic income, of the “dignity” decree, adviser to the then Minister of Economic Development and Labour, and Deputy Prime Minister, Luigi Maio, right in the building next to Palazzo Wedekind. Of all those choices, that is, which characterized the 5 Stars in government. And if you do it accompanied by one of the most punctual journalists and reference economic signature of the Corriere della Sera, the journey through the corridors of those two buildings becomes not only a journey on how and how much INPS weighs on our lives today but also about the future. And it is clear that the one between Enrico Marro and Tridico can be not only an intellectual challenge but also a sort of guide if it becomes a book like the one published by Solferino «Today’s work, tomorrow’s pension – Why the country’s future passes through the ‘Inps’ (195 pages, 16 euros). It is no coincidence that pensions are one of the most important chapters. Not only because the partial changes introduced by the new government are a prelude or must be a prelude to an overall rearrangement of the rules, but also because it is a question of arriving at a completely different approach. Which? “The differentiation of retirement ages based on the work performed,” says Tridico for example. Especially bearing in mind that different generations have and will have different treatments. And when asked whether young people will retire, Marro underlines how strong workers take advantage of the possibility of leaving work earlier. That is to say, those who “have always worked and received increasing wages, while those who risk remaining in work up to the age of 70 are the ‘weaker’ workers, i.e. those who have had more years of temporary employment and therefore find it difficult to achieve the minimum of contributions for 20 years or a check for a minimum amount equal to 1.5 times the social allowance (755 euros per month in 2023), as required by law”.

And it will not be just that of pensions that will be the chapter to change. Also for the citizen’s income, after the partial changes already underway, still other heavy changes are announced. That income to which Tridico is particularly attached. Also for attention to “inequalities, unemployment, poverty”. Because, as Marro says, he lived these problems on his own skin. He comes to be professor of economics at the University of Roma Tre starting from a small town in Calabria where his two parents – he says – worked the land, they could neither read nor write. A «child of the welfare state», he defines himself. Born into a family with seven brothers and sisters, a deaf-mute father who learns to say a few words only after him and only after the health insurance provides him, with irreparable damage, a hearing aid. Hence that attention to a welfare state that must understand how to spend money better than him. Especially when he wants to help the weakest, those who can’t find work. So it’s better to focus on the «deduction of contributions for the hiring of young people»; or for women “better relief for hiring after the birth of the first child”. But Tridico knows, having left Palazzo Chigi as Di Maio’s adviser to enter Palazzo Wedekind alongside as INPS president, that much of the practical articulation of the ideas of those who find themselves at the helm of the country passes through those rooms. And therefore, as he says at the end of the book: «When my mandate expires, I will go back to doing one of the most beautiful jobs in the world». © REPRODUCTION RESERVED