Inps: separation between assistance and social security?

1 February 20222 years ago babelfish

Inps: separation between assistance and social security? The intervention of Michele Poerio, Pietro Gonella and Stefano Biasioli

The FEDER.SPeV. (together with CONFEDIR and APS Leonida) has always had a particular DNA. A DNA that has not been lost over the years, but has instead been strengthened (with a positive mutation!), Especially under the Presidency of Poerio and his Board. Which? That of having always said "bread to bread, wine to wine" even when statements of this type or of much greater weight would certainly have had a negative impact on the current rulers, politicians, ordinaries, technicians of various backgrounds.

Specifically, the FEDER.SPeV. and CONFEDIR for over thirty years, since Law 88/1989 was promulgated which in Article 37 provides for the separation between social security and assistance, have always supported the unavoidable need to separate, in the INPS budget, these expenses to define clearly the costs related to assistance (and, therefore, to be borne by general taxation) from those related to social security (linked to the work contributions paid). Furthermore, this separation is foreseen by our Constitutional Charter.

Politics has always evaded Law 88/1989; the various presidents of INPS (including the last four) have always done nothing in this direction, despite the fact that – over the years from 2011 to today – the various governments have uploaded at least a dozen welfare items to INPS.

One wonders why nobody wants this separation.

It is not in our genome to do conspiracy: it may not be because, even with the excuse of the call of international organizations that say "you spend too much on pensions" these gentlemen can use the excuse of the INPS deficit to be able to squeeze more and more pensioners without having to cut waste and deadwood which, however, electorally make ??

One of the most representative politicians of the First Republic, Giulio Andreotti, said: “to think badly makes you sin, but often you get it right”.

Quite recently, the last two Labor ministers invented one and activated the other an "alleged technical commission" (whose composition and competence is largely unknown to us peons ) which drafted a long report (apparently approved by a majority , with the positive vote of a CGIL (sic) member, who – in full contrast to the detailed tables assembled – concluded that "the separation between assistance and social security is useless … and unnecessary".

The quotation marks are ours but the substance is this. This conclusion led technicians or pseudos, economists or pseudo-syndicates, former trade unionists to write enthusiastic articles in which they obviously agreed with the aforementioned conclusion.

The FEDER.SPeV. reacted and, with her, a friend, a great economist, prof. Giuseppe Pennisi, who circulated a critical article on the work of the Orlando commission.

Well, the long Orlando Commission report has never been published on any government site and has therefore remained in the shadows. Perhaps to suddenly appear as a cobra, at times other than those of the presidential litany?

In the meantime, however, our group (Poerio, Sizia, Biasioli and Gonella) was active. Pietro Gonella (expert in the sector), in twelve long days of work, worked out a Countertext, full of tables and sensible observations, which represent the basis of the FEDER.SPeV.-CONFEDIR-APS LEONIDA COUNTERDEDUCTIONS at the work of the Orlando Commission.

Our document was therefore added to the dozens of articles that Poerio, Sizia, Gonella, Pennisi and Biasioli (+ Alberto Brambilla, for his part, on Social Security Itineraries) have written on the subject.

For his part, prof. Brambilla, in his latest report on the Italian pension budget presented to the Chamber of Deputies in February 2021, states: "welfare expenditure increases due to the continuous political" promises "and the inefficiency of the organizational machine, without a centralized registry, of a effective monitoring between the various providers and an adequate system of controls, essential to help with adequate services and tools only those who really need them. And not evaders or criminals who often go to concessions, money and bonuses disbursed at the bottom of the list, with all due respect to the statistics on poverty, far from abolished despite the enormous amount of money given ".

And the sen. Nannicini, an economist, also present, stated that "pension and welfare expenditure must be kept separate not only for accounting and performance control reasons, but also because they derive from a different policy". For pensions, there is a need for certainty … for assistance, on the other hand, there is the need for "selective universalism" to improve the efficiency of benefits ".

The following part is a brief summary of the enormous work done.

INPS, BETWEEN ASSISTANCE AND SOCIAL SECURITY

The "Assistance" is a function that is carried out by INPS in admixture with its original / source function, that is that concerning the "Social Security", which must ensure over time the non-damage to the synallagma "pension benefit against contributions paid in full" .

After the period of the great reforms of Amato-Dini-Berlusconi (in part) and Prodi, it was Berlusconi himself who loaded the so-called "one million lire a month" pensions on pension expenditure in 2001. Other measures followed, such as: contribution for young people and the unemployed, deductible in the South, early retirement, 14th monthly payments, social APE, early childhood, pension and citizenship income, which, despite being essentially welfare, have been loaded on the "pension item".

In light of what has just been said, CONFEDIR, FEDER.SPe V. and APS Leonida cannot but disagree with the position taken by the Technical Commission towards the position expressed in Report No. 8, year 2021 – The Budget of the Italian social security system .

Below are the terms used / expressed by the Technical Commission:

"Pension component defined in an arbitrarily restrictive manner"
"The goal of this accounting forcing"
"These are unfounded conclusions"
"Expenditure on assistance (equal to 2.4% of GDP in 2019)"

These are objectively judgments / criticisms, some to be disavowed and totally eliminated, others at least to weaken / mitigate / downsize in relation to the a priori definition (by the state authorities in charge of this) of "pension" items with very clear welfare items, because they are not based on individual contribution payments, but on state funding (therefore from taxes, paid by those who pay taxes: 49% of citizens).

Consequently CONFEDIR, FEDER.SPe V. and APS Leonida, in contrast to the conclusions of the Technical Commission, do not consider "arbitrary" – rather they share – the position of the Study and Research Center of Social Security Itineraries, chaired by prof. Alberto Brambilla, who considers welfare expenditure equal to 6.39% of GDP, in the sense that the aforementioned 2.4% of GDP (as per welfare expenditure) really appears to be a mockery of those who believe that social benefits provided in the absence of qualifying contributory coverage – therefore paid to citizens in need, but without a work history – have a welfare and non-social security nature and character, in correct application and exegesis of Article 38 of the Constitution.

We like to conclude our article with a sentence taken from a publication by prof. Giuseppe Pennisi: We do not know who the members of the Commission are, but we fear that they are old (whatever their age) lawyers who love matters of goat wool and get lost in observing their navel.

I suggest they read (if they know English) the recent World Bank volume titled Addressing Marginalization Polarization and the Labor Market Progress and Challenges of NonFinancial Definend Contribution Pension Schemes , authored by Robert Holzmann, Edward Palmer, Robert Palacios and Stefano Sacchi. , all names of great international importance: Holzmann, for example, is currently governor of the Austrian National Bank and a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB).

The volume also contains a detailed chapter on Italy. The conclusion is that the contribution system requires the separation between pension and assistance.

And that's all for now. But it doesn't stop there.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/inps-separazione-assistenza-previdenza/ on Tue, 01 Feb 2022 06:54:21 +0000.