But is there anyone of sane mind that really thinks that with 19 million pensioners and 4 million public sector employees we can do it? Every year, to keep them going, another 100 billion in public debt is shovelled into the engine of “Locomotive Italy”, as though it were coal. The locomotive is going slower and slower, making heavy weather of it, with uphill stretches that by now are even more impossible. That money corresponds to extra annual interest of at least 5 billion. Paid by the tax-payers who are becoming fewer and fewer. Companies are closing down and there are 4 million people unemployed. The interest rate on our public debt is going up and the amount due in interest can only go up. If all goes well, in 2011, we will pay 100 billion in interest. Italy has no chance of getting by with this dead weight.
The number of public employees equals the population of Ireland and we are “toing and froing” with the provinces. They all have to be closed down. What further discussion is needed? Pensions have to be reviewed as a whole system. It doesn’t make sense that there are double and triple pensions. One is more than enough. Existing pensions need to be paid out according to how much you have paid in. If you’ve paid in this much, then that is how much you will receive (exactly the opposite of the parliamentary pensions) and anyway pensions have to have an absolute maximum that cannot be breached. 3,000 euro to me seems fair and then a minimum for those who don’t have enough to live on. Managers, who have earned millions of euro in their lives, don’t need a pension of 10 to 20 thousand euro a month, like the annual salary of an office worker.
It’s not possible to divide Italy into two according to pensions, with the strategy of “Those who have paid in, have paid in. Those who have received, have received.” It’s dangerous. The young people, but also many in their forties and fifties, will never retire and have a pension. Via various sorts of taxes, why do they have to pay for a pension for Mastella, or Amato or a regional councillor from Lombardy or Sicily? This doesn’t make sense. Pension reform has to start with those who are already getting a pension, without continually raising the pension age based on the ludicrous excuse of life expectancy. I couldn’t care less about the statistics. After 35 years of contributions I have the right to rest. A labourer won’t retire until he’s 70 years old. He’ll die before that.
Young people have nothing left to lose. They’ve no work, no pension, no social services, no hope for a better future. In the austerity package, no one wasted a word on them. Watch out for their anger. When the new generations understand that today it will be them above all paying for the crisis and that in future they will inherit the public debt, no type of mediation will be possible anymore. The way the wind is blowing, is getting worse and worse.

Soldi rubati - by Nunzia Penelope I cittadini sono poveri perché i delinquenti sono ricchi {The citizens are poor because the delinquents are rich} Buy your copy today.