Young people deserve more than a pension. Let’s start with a proper job

The so-called pension for young people is an eternal promise, but the government has no intention of recalculating contributions for those who want to leave work early. The possible proposal is a guarantee pension as a consolation prize

After several months of absence, yesterday the government held a meeting with the trade unions on pensions. The only thing it offers to young people is (perhaps) the pension for young people, i.e. a minimum guarantee for contributory pensions. Maybe is a must because everyone makes themselves beautiful with a promise they will never keep. Anyone who started working after 1996 is a “young person” for the Italian pension system because they will retire with the contributory system, so their pension will be proportional to the contributions paid. The so-called youth pension is sacrosanct and is an eternal promise of all governments. It has never been done because in any case the problem of integrating contributory pensions to a minimum is still a long way off: there are 10/15 years left before the vast majority of new pensions will be contributory. There is only one valid reason for tackling the problem already today: if we really were talking about a contributory system not only for the “young people” who started after 1996 but also for all those who retire today and want to retire early with respect to the legal requirements. If this were the case (but it is not) instead of using the various quotas to retire earlier, it would be necessary to go out with a contributory recalculation of the pension and therefore it would be right to immediately have a guarantee pension – a minimum level of pension for those who go out with the contribution system. But unfortunately the government has no intention of proposing a recalculation of contributions for those who want to retire early today but (perhaps and I repeat perhaps) intends to propose the guarantee pension as a consolation prize for young people. It is the only thing it proposes for young people: pensions for young people. If I were young, I’d get angry: you keep extending the benefit of the quotas for those retiring early today and then you give me the consolation gift (if you do it!) of adjusting the contribution regime knowing full well that it is much more penalizing than that of Today. So why don’t you start spreading the costs of the contribution system over everyone now without arriving at the last moment in ten years when everyone will start going out with the contribution system in which the cost will fall entirely on those generations?