By Ted Belman
So what do the protest leaders want?
Haaretz summarizes their latest demands in an editorial on the subject. It considers their demands as “increasingly moderate”. What surprised me most was that they didn’t put forward a plan to increase the supply of housing.
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Aside from restating their previous demand that Manuel Trachtenberg resign as head of a panel designed to deal with Israel’s social issues, the protest leaders will attempt to “eliminate economic centralization”, propose a discussion to end monopolies, dismantle economic pyramids, increase competition, tax reform that would cancel the lowering of corporate taxes while raising taxes on high-income individuals, lowering indirect taxes, and monitoring of the capital market.
I can’t understand why they want Trachtenberg to resign but I totally agree with the balance of this paragraph. The one caveat I have is that raising taxes should not be so aggressive as to result in emigration from Israel.
Yes Economic concentration getting worse and is bad for the country’s businesses, and it’s a structural risk to the economy.
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Moreover, the protest leaders are seeking to promote the idea of a welfare state that seeks to reduce social gaps and eradicate poverty.
This is a minefield. Poverty can never be eradicated as America found in its “war on poverty”.
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They further demand the halting of the privatization of public services such as education, health, housing and employment, insisting on ensuring that said services will not be privatized in the future, while emphasizing the Israeli government’s direct responsibility for them.
In general, I favour privitization rather than state control. There is no question that they have a socialist agenda. Can’t understand why they are against privatizing of education, housing and employment. The government has botched housing. This demand is antithetical to the first demand above.
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According to estimates, implementing the demands could cost well over tens of billions of shekels a year. The statement suggests the government use revenues from its newly acquired natural gas reserves in order to aid in the funding of the demanded changes.
I see no problem with this as far as new policies are accepted
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Furthermore, the organizers seek to replace the tent protests with a network of “community-based protest movements” across Israel, where activists will be able to organize discussions on the social-economic situation in Israel, as well as put pressure on members of Knesset from the major parties.
Go for it. It is like a Tea Party Movement. But you don’t need the government for this.
I have been corresponding with a leftist involved in the protest. She writes in rebuttal to my arguments,
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Please recall that when Clinton left office there was a large fiscal surplus in the US and when Bush II left office there was a large debt. The US debt grew under both Bushes and Reagan, so it’s hard to argue that the right is more fiscally conservative than the left. They just spend on different things. See Wikileaks.
And, of course the capitalist US spends a lot more government monies on its government health system than the socialist Europe, so really you’re being very arbitrary.
It is true that Israel pays for its defence budget through (by reducing) its social safety net – we spend half of the OECD average expenditure on social welfare and transfer payments.
The option to this is actually raising taxes for the rich. In Israel the rich pay LESS taxes here than in most OECD countries and also there is a much higher level of indirect taxes (sales tax and the like, which tax poor and rich equally) vs direct taxes (which are related to the income levels of those being taxed). In Israel, poor people today are far poorer than they were 20 years ago despite the booming economy here, and rich people are far richer. If the rich pay more we can have a more equal society.
I know that you will argue that if the rich pay more they will create less jobs, but there is little evidence to support the idea that trickle-down economics actually work.
No, I won’t argue that. Israel has the lowest unemployment in the world. I can’t understand why this hasn’t caused wages to rise and thus inflation. So there is no concern that raising taxes will raise unemployment.
The primary concern is to lower the cost of living rather than subsidize those who can’t manage. So I am not relying on “trickle down”. Double the rate of housing construction to lower cost of housing. This will also provide employment for Arabs in J&S. This is good because we need a labour pool to do the building. This will lower cost of living dramatically.
The Jews are striking, demonstrating and squabbling, while their enemies prepare to attack them. Typical.
Perhaps the answer is to be found by following-up with the question of which countries they go TO:
Do they go to countries with that “growing gap between the wealthy and the much less so”?
Or do they go to places where the gap is artificially reduced, by govt?
Do they go to countries with planned economies
— or to countries with market economies?
I think you know the answer…
“Please recall” that Clinton gutted the military budget — the “peace dividend,” it was supposed to be. He ignored numerous terrorist attacks, including Trade Towers I (but a reduced military budget would’ve made that hardly feasible).
So 9/11 was planned on his watch. (You don’t think that was pulled off on a lark, do you?) That little project was years in the making, and the impetus and audacity that went into it were based on the apparent impotence and moral corruption that went into Mr Clinton’s observed (non-)reaction to those earlier “trial balloons” & dry runs.
The above-noted 9/11 changed EVERYTHING.
So of course there was a large debt, and WOULD’VE been a large debt even if GWB had become a total skinflint from then on. Think about it.
Little evidence? — in what parallel universe, “little evidence”?
Reagan tax cut:
Real median family incomes, which had plummeted during the stagflationary administration of Reagan’s ‘malaise’-paralyzed predecessor, rose by nearly 10 percent -— and not merely for “The Rich,” notes Club-for-Growth President Stephen Moore, but across the board — a fact clearly confirmed by Census Bureau figures for the period.
As much as our progressive-obsessive, friends-of-scarcity, ideologues would love to explain it all away -— and there’s no end to their trying -— there is simply no tossing off or tiptoeing round the fact that the Reagan-era, tax-cutting policies generated the largest peacetime economic boom in American history….. and damned near 35 million more jobs to boot.
The growing gap between the wealthy and the much less so also is taking place–surprise! in the US, and here we see a middle class in deep trouble. One of the issues that seldom gets raised in the US, except perhaps by economist Robert Reich, is that the wages of so many have stagnated for years and cost of living increases.
Now turn to Israel: ever take not on the huge numbers of Israelis who leave for other countries? Over one million and that is a lot given the rather small population Israel has. Now ask: why do they leave and yet still tell those in their new countries that they love Israel?
How many potential military people would Israel have to fight for its security if so many did not leave?
My comment was lost again.
Bad idea.
Recall that Clinton had a GOP Congress. Bush had a Democrat Congress. And under Obama the debt has quadrupled.
Yes it does work. Don’t buy into the socialist dogma of that person you are corresponding with.