Of Massimo Caruso

Source: The Lighthouse on the World
Life begins at forty. Those of my generation often heard this as children, perhaps from the forty-year-olds of the time who, already at that age, they smelled of retirement. The same pension as my generation, a generation of precarious workers for life, he will see very late or perhaps he will never see.
We don't want to rant, but data in hand, the age group come on 35 ai 49 years has in fact found itself entangled in a dramatic situation from which it will be difficult to escape without facing the consequences and related expenses. The deep wounds caused by this terrible social butchery already have a cost and the bill that will arrive in the years to come will be even saltier.
The costs that are already faced are economic, social and health. The costs that will be faced will be predominantly political, because the same policy that created this huge trap and has still not managed to defuse it, will have to make sure to put together the pieces of a generation shattered already from its first foray into the world of work. Precisely, a generation of precarious workers.
The numbers are merciless: in Italy, since December 2016 in December 2017, employed people aged between 35 e 49 years have waned 2,1%, for a total of approximately 204 thousand people. The worst result among the various age groups, if you consider that, in the same period, the band between 25 e 34 years, recorded losses for the 0,7%.
Blame the crisis, right. Just finished high school or university studies, the global economic crisis was already biting, reason why, the aspiring worker found himself wandering among the rubble of what had been the certainties on which his parents had built dignified or brilliant careers. The neo-liberal method then pulled the ace out of its sleeve: flexibility. Many believed in it, intellectuals and politicians, treaties have been written and laws promulgated in the name of a series of revitalizing reforms of the world of work.
The only tangible result was the flourishing of a thick forest of atypical contracts which all result in the most absolute precariousness of employment relationships. Dal 2015 al 2017 the number of permanent hires decreased by 41,5%, while temporary hiring recorded a surge equal to 38,9%. They called it the Jobs Act.
It's due to apathy and the lack of willingness to get involved, right. The data regarding the unemployed and those who have given up on looking for work have grown significantly and the responsibility has been placed exclusively on those who are the true victims of a short-sighted and one-way socio-economic strategy. It was only downloaded to a certain age group, on a generation of precarious workers for life, the gradual asphyxiation of the welfare system, with the result that the only share of family income continues to rise, from afar 1969 to date, is that deriving from pensions (+25,1%).
After all, to maintain a large portion of the population who have spent more years as pensioners than as workers, the money had to be scraped from somewhere. Except that this system turned out to be a real boomerang, because those same pensions now serve to keep alive those who will not be entitled to them, having been denied it by this perverse feeding system which has blocked all economic development in support of those who have been out of the world of work for years.