Here are the new pension hoaxes
The intervention of Michele Poerio, general secretary of Confedir and national president Feder.SPeV.
"Arieccoci", dear retired friends and colleagues with "fake news" on pensions!
It will not be that, approaching the deadline (31/12/2021) of the pension cuts provided for by the Budget Law of the first Conte government, someone is already beginning to think for the umpteenth time of reiterating further cuts in pensions from 1,500 – 2,000 € gross monthly up and to the so-called "golden pensions"?
This signal comes to us from the CGIA of Mestre through the coordinator of its study center dr. Paolo Zabeo who, from time to time, enlightens us with his pearls of pension wisdom.
In fact, he said: "we pay more pensions than paychecks".
Says Dr. Zabeo that at 1 January 2019 the totality of pensions paid in Italy amounted to 22.78 million, a number increased to approximately 23 million taking into account the normal retirement flow and the impulse determined by the introduction of "quota 100" against 22.77 million employees.
“Therefore – continues Zabeo – we can affirm with a high degree of certainty that the allowances paid to retired people are currently higher than the number of employees present in the country”.
In the future, therefore, according to Zabeo, it will not be easy to guarantee the sustainability of social security spending, which currently exceeds 300 billion euros per year, equal to 16.7% of GDP.
This is absolutely incorrect data!
And someone tell Dr. Zabeo that retirees are numerically significantly lower than active workers (in 2019 there were 23.5 million employees against 16.2 million retirees).
If anything, social security benefits are more, but because in Italy many retirees receive more than one pension (on average 1.45 benefits per person).
It is true that in the first months of 2020, due to the Covid effect and the "quota 100", pensioners increased a little (16.4 million) and the ratio between assets and pensioners deteriorated somewhat from 1.44 to 1.36 but from here to say that there was overtaking we run!
The former Minister of Labor Catalfo should have vigorously denied these data of the CGIA, also because in Europe such statements are paid dearly!
In fact, the frugal Dutch leader Mark Rutte did not miss the opportunity to harshly criticize pension spending by “Italian cicadas” during the negotiations on the Recovery fund . Nor did the former Prime Minister Conte hesitate to deny the Dutch Premier, perhaps because he does not want to clarify what social security and welfare expenditure is. The "real" pension expenditure, that is, that sustained by the payments of workers and employers, is about 207 billion and not more than 300, which is the aggregate expenditure between social security and assistance (when is a clear separation expected? a specific rule – Law 88/1989 art.37)?
It should also be noted that out of the 207 billion mentioned above, the State takes back over 50 in taxes for which the cost of "real" pensions amounts to about 155 billion against a contribution payment of about 185 billion with an asset of about 30 billion The remainder is pure welfare expenditure that the Conte I and II governments liked so much.
Therefore lies, knowing that they are lying, those who claim that the pension is in deficit.
Furthermore, we will find ourselves facing major problems with the expiry of the redundancy block with about one million workers without contract renewal. What we will do? Will we continue to provide emergency income at gogo? Will we continue to spend mountains of money on pure welfare? If this money, on the other hand, were invested in construction sites and jobs were created, the pension argument would lose any propaganda force.
So: no more falsehoods and hands off the pockets of the pensioners who deserved the most and paid the most, in every sense!
Instead of persevering with illegitimate measures or proposals (stealing portions of pension from pensioners), endorsed, moreover, by exquisitely "political" rulings of the Council (see last sentence no. 234/20) to guarantee a welfare system in a civilized country It is possible, I would say dutiful, to finally fight seriously against: corruption, evasion and avoidance, illegal work, inefficient and self-referential bureaucracy, slow and unjust justice, blocking of infrastructures, underfunding of health care ( why not use the Mes?), the school disconnected from the world of work, short-sighted politics, etc.
In this sense I wish the current government chaired by Prof. Mario Draghi good work!
Prof. Michele Poerio
CONFEDIR Secretary General
National President of FEDER.SPeV.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/riprendono-fiato-le-bufale-previdenziali/ on Fri, 26 Feb 2021 06:07:52 +0000.