Mussolini’s Italy had eight million bayonets, while the Italy of the new millennium has 17 million pensioners. Before you can go on pension you will have to wait for them to depart en-masse. Those who are currently working (or looking for jobs) keep on seeing the bar being raised, requiring 35/40 years of contributions and perhaps even more. In essence, today’s twenty or thirty-year-olds will never ever be able to go on pension. The odds of anyone being able to work continuously for 40 years without any break in service and with full monthly pension fund contributions to the INPS are about as good as the odds of winning the “Superenalotto” lottery.
The Country is split into two classes: the pensioners and the lost. Lost because they are either working at piecemeal jobs, off the record, or are unemployed, underpaid or terminated. Because their pension is merely a social mirage. Pensions are the true "class divide" in Italy. It’s not right to expect young people to increase the pensionable age and increase the number of years of contributions to qualify for their pension while there are entire battalions of pensioners receiving two or three pensions, parliamentarians that qualify for full pensions after only two and a half years of service in the legislature, millions of pensioners who receive a pension for which they only paid half, or even less, of the normal contributions, hundreds of thousands of so-called “baby pensioners” and pensioners with gilt-edged pensions. The minimum pension must be guaranteed at all costs, as well as all those pensions for which the required contributions have actually been paid. In all other cases, what is needed is a tabula rasa. Unless this happens, all those people that are currently paying contributions to the INPS, especially the younger ones, should refuse to contribute even a single Euro more. It’s like throwing money down the drain. No one can guarantee whether and when you will get it back.
Making sacrifices should be expected either of everyone or no one. What is the current situation regarding the pensions paid to former parliamentarians, former Regional and Provincial Premiers, former ministers and municipal leaders and former State Presidents? How many consulting pensioners are there in this Country? How many pensioners is out there that are getting more than 4000 Euro? How many of them continue to vote in favour of maintaining the status quo with regard to pensions together with the two-faced Pdl-Pdwithoutanel?
It appears that the only those who have reached pensionable age can get ahead. The combined age of the Berlusconi-Napolitano duo is almost ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY YEARS. The weirdest thing is that the "lost ones", the youngsters without any present and even less of a future, not to mention no pension, have not yet got really pissed off. They are destined to work like slaves and then die on the job, just like the oarsmen of the Roman Galleys. Meanwhile, the 4000 Euro a month plus pensioners will be living it up at the Club Med with boxes of Viagra their bedside tables. Come on guys, I say not a penny more to the INPS, it’s far better to hide your money under the mattress. Watch this space for more advice and suggestions in future.