An innovative proposal to separate assistance from pension

10 July 20222 years ago babelfish

The intervention of Pietro Gonella, former coordinator of the general directors of the Venetian local health authorities

and, in Italy, there is little knowledge of the "state" of the PUBLIC SECURITY (INPS), due to the fact that only specialized magazines publish and comment on the general rules of INPS and the correct accounts (income / expenses) of the pension itself , separating the "pure" social security aspects from the welfare ones.

Starting from the concepts of GPT (management of temporary services) and of GIAS (management of welfare interventions), Gonella reaffirmed the FOUNDING CONCEPT of the FEDERSPeV and the APS-LEONIDA, namely that – in the INPS budget – the PURE SOCIAL SECURITY ITEMS are clearly DISTINCT FROM THOSE ASSISTENTIALS. Distinction of items and economic accounts (income and expenses).

Article 37 (paragraph 3, letter D) of Law 88/1989 requires it, but this article has remained largely disregarded. It states that this is due to the different genesis of the 2 items: the welfare one is linked to state funding (taxes) and the social security one is based on the contributions paid by individual workers and their employers.

In 2020, WELFARE EXPENDITURE was 144.758 billion (+ 26.7% versus 2019), equal to 8% of GDP, with an average annual increase of 4.5% in the 2008-2020 period; an expense equal to 93% of the after-tax social security expense! Nevertheless (and despite the “grillino income”) in recent years the number of people and “poor” families has not decreased, indeed it has increased sharply, almost DOUBLED. Truly a paradoxical result!

In the same year, the TOTAL SOCIAL SECURITY EXPENDITURE was 234.736 billion (with an average increase of 1.5% per year in the 2008-2020 period), while the "pure social security" amounted to 211.477 billion, with over 22 million of social security and welfare benefits for over 16 million people (16,041,202). Social security expenditure after taxes (a good 56.194 billion) was 155.283 billion. Sustainable spending thanks to the active / retired ratio of 1.4238. This figure is confirmed by a series of articles from the Study and Research Center of Social Security Routes, which confirm that – at present – “pure” pension expenditure is perfectly under control, thanks to the reforms implemented. Not so can be said for the welfare sector, in constant and whirling ascent.

As a result of the pandemic and the drop in GDP (1,654 billion) in 2020 contributory revenues fell (195.4 billion versus 209.4 billion in 2019) with a gap between contributions and benefits of 39.336 billion . Despite this, in the same year the "pure" pension balance was positive for 29.813 billion, due to the taxes paid by pensioners.

This confirms the need for ABSOLUTE TRANSPARENCY in social security accounts. We are increasingly convinced that the separation of assistance from social security is the right way to clarify the INPS world, in which today the permeability of expenses between the two functions triumphs, resulting in situations of continuous monetary transfer from social security to assistance, with damage of the first.

But the welfare function is not the responsibility of "ex-worker" retirees and must be the sole responsibility of general taxation. The positions of many "experts" opposed to the separation between the two functions, for ideological and non-technical reasons, are well known. We, on the other hand, maintain this request, also combining it with that of IDENTIFYING WITH A SINGLE CODE the VARIOUS “pure” Social Security ITEMS and the VARIOUS WELFARE VOICES, in order to at least clarify accounting, once and for all.

In this way ALL the CARE VOICES IN CHIEF – today – TO A SINGLE ASSISTED CITIZEN would be identified, helping to clean up overlapping and redundant care items. In this way, finally, the certainty of a correct attribution of the welfare / assisted items would be reached and a serious cross-referencing could be made between INPS data and personal income tax data, clarifying once and for all the correctness of the “ascribed” figures.

This innovative choice (which could be charged to INPS-ISTAT-Agenzia delle Entrate-CNEL) would also fulfill the repeated requests of the EU Commission "not to load on the pension chapter items of expenditure that it would be more correct to attribute to other chapters".

Despite this, Italy has always preferred to ignore this invitation, based on the Italic principle that "… where there is confusion, the political management of the problem is easier …".

From Berlusconi onwards, dozens of welfare items have been loaded on pension expenditure: one million lire a month; contributions for young people and the unemployed; costs of early retirement; Social EPA; early retirees; Basic income; fight against poverty; navigators etc. etc.

So WE ASK HIGH VOICE (as foreseen by the Jobs Act of 2015) the CREATION of AN ASSISTANCE DATABASE, with the likely prospect of obtaining ANNUAL SAVINGS of AT LEAST 5 BILLION (Alberto Brambilla), ESTABLISHING A CENTRAL RECORD to formalize and implement a GENERAL REGISTRY of ASSISTANCE, where to merge, by CODE and FAMILY UNIT, all the SERVICES PROVIDED by the STATE, by the PUBLIC BODIES and by the LOCAL BODIES to which to associate the services offered by the private sector.

All this in order to:

To know completely and correctly how much each individual and each family unit perceives from the various donors;
To obtain a SAVINGS of over 100 million to be paid today by general taxation;
To obtain an INDEX for pure pension expenditure only;
To obtain ANOTHER INDEX for welfare expenditure (which, on average, increases annually by more than three times that of social security);
To create a THIRD INDEX for INAIL accident annuities.

Italy is experiencing a series of crises: pandemic, war and demographic. In 2050 there will be over 20 million retirees out of about 50 million inhabitants and 20 million workers, with an active / retired ratio that will drop to 1! How will the pension system hold up, then? It is therefore necessary, from now on, to implement serious measures in favor of CHRISTMAS, simplifying the life of parents (nursery schools, schools, books, contributions up to the age of majority). An ad hoc fund must be created to combat denatality, in order to ensure the sustainability and stability of the social security system, involving on the one hand the State, which will gradually have to allocate up to 1% of GDP annually, and on the other of income over 55,000 euros / year (a class that becomes 50,000 euros / year from 2022), i.e. about 1.9 million taxpayers. It would be a finalized “tax”, testimony of a real WELFARE COMMMUNITY. Tax finalized and not "thrown to the wind" as the hateful contribution of solidarity, never finalized and finally abolished on 12/31/21.

It could be a new item, in the IRPEF forms, an alternative to 2 × 1000 or 8 per thousand.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/assistenza-previdenza/ on Sat, 09 Jul 2022 06:20:20 +0000.