Unpredictable pensions, Sergio Rizzo’s alarm on the future of pensions – Corriere.it

When Italy was young and bold, sure of conquering the future with the same ease with which it had left behind the war, with its wounds and its rubble, the sustainability of social security was the least of the worries. We were then one of the most populated countries in the world. Today we are one of the oldest. Demographic decline largely underestimated. It turns out, reading The Titanic of pensions by Sergio Rizzo (publisher Solferino), that until 1945 the pension system was funded, i.e. contributions were paid into a fund and then invested. A bit like pension funds do today. Those that we can’t get off the ground to strengthen the second pillar of social security, given that the first, the mandatory one, has been panting for some time. Italy had not yet been completely liberated before a lieutenant decree (March 1, 1945) of the Bonomi government opened up the division. In other words, the benefits began to be paid also with the contributions paid by those who were at work.

The elderly were few at the time, families took care of them more easily. And not just because the claims were modest. The reflection of a peasant civilization persisted in which families lived together in farmhouses, gave each other a hand in apartment buildings crowded with children towards whom there was more tolerance than today. The strong internal immigration, from the South to the North, from the East – which was not yet the industrial and rich North East of today – towards the West of the industrial triangle, revolutionized its compositions and habits. The migratory balance will change sign only in 1975, when the exceptional post-war development inexorably slows down. Until then there were more Italians looking for work abroad, pouring their remittances to relatives who remained at home, than foreign immigrants from us.

A pay-as-you-go pension system apparently created no problem in an Italy with many people in work and relatively few in retirement. However, over the years, social security became a formidable real welfare tool and immediate political consensus. In 1969, the Rumor government definitively chose the pay-as-you-go system. Retirement pensions already allowed people to leave their jobs with 35 years of contributions, regardless of age. In 1973 the boldest version arrived, that of baby pensions which allowed people to retire even with less than 35 years of age.

A folly that cost the community – writes Rizzo – 250 billion, not to mention the devastating impact on public schools. You begin, in that unfortunate decade, the corporate assault on the pension system that would have undermined its sustainability. But who could ever oppose the recognition of notional contributions in favor of State servants, disadvantaged categories, the large pool of agricultural workers, vast categories of voters? Or, later, to using early retirement to solve major corporate crises?

The bitter reality that emerges from pamphlet of Rizzo who the contributory guilt was, with a few exceptions, almost general. Not always being bipartisan a merit. In pension matters, both at the state level but in particular in the Regions, the use of laws ad hoc, tailor-made measures for a privileged few – politicians, trade unionists – last-minute amendments, a state so recurrent that it has become, even in recent times, a habitual practice. With many who have turned and are turning their gaze elsewhere. Each category (including journalists) has its faults.

The Dini reform of 1995 – which not by chance like the Fornero one of 2012 came after a violent financial crisis – he gradually transformed the system into a contributory one with checks commensurate with the amount of payments. If the Italy of the last century, which was also beginning to have fewer children and no longer wanted to carry out some menial jobs, could have forgiven an underestimation of the hidden bomb with a slow-combustion fuse, today’s one can no longer forgive anything . To have the courage – as Sergio Rizzo writes – to tell the whole truth. Without burying your head in the sand and postponing the statistical-actuarial check on the sustainability of the pension system which by law should be done every three years. And no longer deceive the Italians with false promises – such as the bankruptcy quota 100 -.

The pension system in an increasingly aging country – average age 48 years, was less than 30 years in 1950 – does not hold. The latest Economic and Financial Document (Def) points this out very well, with disturbing scenarios, which can be summarized as follows: only with a strong introduction of regular immigrants can the contribution base be widened and the birth rate raised. As happened in Germany and Sweden. Nurseries are not enough. And it will not be possible to continue for long – as was done with the reduction of the wedge – to unload on the general tax system a growing share of contributions, moreover evaded in a massive form. The INPS has contributory credits well in excess of 100 billion, which has even reached the point of scrapping. Not to mention the scams (particularly in agriculture), the scandal of false invalids (Sicily has the primacy of the blind), the mountain of lawsuits in which INPS succumbs in almost one case out of two.

The bleak picture. Apparently without solution in the face of a changing and often intermittent, precarious job. Tax and social security evasion is no longer tolerable, it would be enough not to indulge it to have appreciable results. Separating assistance from social security would bring out collective and individual costs that are invisible or removed today. Rizzo in favor of a funded system not only for the second pillar but also for the first. A step back 80 years. But above all, a bath of humility in a country that deludes itself into thinking it can still live beyond its means for a long time.

The volume and the meetings

Sergio Rizzo’s book The Titanic of pensions. Because the welfare state is sinking published by Solferino (220 pages, 16.50 euros). It is an analysis of the critical conditions in which the Italian social security system finds itself, which is heading towards collapse.
Sergio Rizzo will present his book on May 15 as part of the Prospero Festival of Monopoli (9pm) with Vincenzo Magist, director of Tele Norba. On 19 June another meeting will be held at the Turin Readers’ Club (6.00 pm), where Rizzo will talk to Elsa Fornero.
Born in Ivrea in 1956, Sergio Rizzo was for a long time a signature of Corriere della Sera and then deputy director of Repubblica. With Gian Antonio Stella he published the bestseller The caste (Rizzoli 2007). For Solferino in 2022 he published the essay Absolute power