Mario Draghi wants to return to the Fornero Law without shortcuts, the League defends to the bitter end a bankruptcy measure such as Quota 100, the unions are asking for a reform that looks only to the interests of the over-60s. No one, in politics as among the social partners, poses the problem of looking a little further, to the social bomb which will hit Italy in a few decades.
One of the most serious (and ignored) problems in our country is the future that awaits today's 30- and 40-year-olds. Based on Dini reform, in fact, those who started paying contributions after 1995 will have the entire pension calculated with the contributory method, which only takes into account the contributions actually paid throughout the working life and is therefore much less generous than the salary, which is instead based on last salaries.
Not only: the contribution amounts in question will also be much smaller than those of previous generations, due to the average level of wages, lower than in the past, and the discontinuity of careers, riddled with holes by precariousness.
In summary, the pensions of the future will be calculated only on the contributions paid, which in turn will be decidedly smaller than those we are used to today. Result: when today's 30- and 40-year-olds reach retirement age (which, as a result of the Fornero law, will have arrived well over 70 years old) will find themselves with starvation pensions. And it's not a journalistic stretch: in some cases, the amount of the checks will be less than half of the last paychecks received in your career. A dramatic jump, capable of throwing thousands of people below the poverty line right at the stage of life where you are most vulnerable.
To address this problem, several proposals have been put forward in the past, starting with a "guarantee pensionfor today's youth. However, all these initiatives have fallen by the wayside and the public debate has returned to focus always and only on those who should (or would like) to retire soon.
An attitude as always short-sighted and cynical at the same time, which ignores tomorrow's tragedies only because facing them today - while there is still time - is complicated and would not bring immediate electoral dividends. A bit like what happens with the environmental issue, another issue that interests young people more than the elderly. Only Prime Minister Mario Draghi, speaking yesterday in a school in Bari, demonstrated once again that he is well aware that the country owes a great debt to the new generations and that he must also remember this when it comes to pensions.
