Economic Spring: Who deserves the credit - and what awaits us around the corner?

The Knesset is on holiday and the people of Israel are celebrating spring, also thanks to the better economic climate than it has ever been here.

But around the corner are some burning economic issues that could be delayed due to political paralysis.

Nir Kipnis

23/04/2022

Saturday, 23 April 2022, 10:09 Updated: 10:58

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In the video: More than one hundred thousand hikers in reserves, parks and beaches (Nature and Parks Authority)

Israel is celebrating.

Anyone who claims that our situation has never been better will be justified.

Despite the corona (and perhaps also thanks to it, as will be explained below) despite the political uncertainty and despite the Russia-Ukraine war (here too there is economic potential and so on), the State of Israel stood for Passover when all important economic parameters point to economic prosperity Are its result).

But every celebration has the hangover of the next morning - and here are some of the issues that can make us a headache when you mute the cheers of the festivals.

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Expensive in the supermarket?

The real rise in prices seems to be waiting for us after the "spring holidays" (Photo: ShutterStock)

Rising prices around the corner

Apparently the problem of price increases is global: there is no local importer or manufacturer who will not be in a hurry to pull out of the sleeve the new price lists of raw materials, transportation costs and other variables that greatly increase the production or import costs of the final product.

guess what?

They are one hundred percent right - and at the same time sand is spreading in the eyes of us all.

Why they are right does not seem to need to be explained: it is indeed more expensive to produce in Israel or to import into it.

Why even though they are right, are they deceiving us?

Because they refrain from mentioning the conditions that allowed them insane profits over the years: the status of an exclusive importer (that is, having the ability to narrow the steps of the corresponding importer), protective caps on products manufactured in Israel and more.

: The report of the committee appointed by the Ministry of Economy to examine the profitability of permanent agriculture unequivocally that the source of the gap is in intermediaries.

That is, the blame is not on the poor farmer who is fighting for his livelihood - and contrary to what they wanted us to think, not even on a retailer who counts goods beyond the world's usual profit margins.

In the middle there is an empire of farmers celebrating on every tomato we cut into a salad.

So it's true that they claimed in advance that the committee "marked the target and only then fired the arrow," but it was time to call them by their real names: liars.

For them, it is not the conclusions that are problematic, but the test itself, because each test would reveal the fact that they are exploiting them all: the farmers who provide them with the produce, on the one hand - and the Israeli public on the other.

Here is a duty that rests not only on the political echelon, in which too many succumb to the formidable agricultural lobby, but also on the farmers themselves: the responsibility for paving the way to the light at the end of the greenhouse rests with them as well.

If they do not help the state in the internal dismantling of the mechanisms it seeks to dismantle from the outside, then the blame for the destruction of agriculture in Israel will also be on them.

But - and this is a big but, agriculture is just one example of the problem: although price increases are a global problem, Israel, precisely because of its distorted economic structure, has the ability to curb price increases by introducing some simple reforms that will increase competition.

No one wants to harm existing manufacturers or importers, but in a large part of the industries a by-product of an essential reform will be a total erosion in profit, which will remain beautiful and dignified even after it.

Netanyahu and Lieberman: Who gets the credit for the good time of the Israeli economy? (Photo: Photo Processing, Reuters, Niv Aaronson)

Who cares about credit ratings?

Credit rating is an elusive concept that is sometimes difficult to explain its impact on the lives of all of us.

Still we will try through one of the phenomena that must have annoyed anyone who needed a loan, even a mortgage.

I will never forget the play I saw with my own eyes, of a customer who came to sign loan forms at the bank - and about a quarter of an hour after signing this and that wording, the handling fee and the stamping fee, in acronyms here and here and here ... and a full signature including ID number Mouth and mouth - threw the pen nervously and roared at the clerk: "Say, even Dankner (the days were the days of the big haircut of the one who was held until then as a tycoon. NK) who received billions from you in Hava, signed so many forms?".

Israel's good credit rating allows the country to buy money cheaply.

In a routine where state tax revenues break every possible record it may not need the money, but when it needs it to absorb a massive rise, build a metro, cut the canal of the days ... yo nim it, it will be able to get it easily and cheaply.

A good credit rating of a country, like that of a private businessman, increases the willingness to do business with it.

This rating has recently been improved thanks to a statistic that rating companies particularly like: stability.

Israeli citizens can continue to quarrel over whether a prime minister from a small party is a morally legitimate phenomenon or not, but from a purely financial point of view, the Bennett government - and in this case: Bennett-Lieberman, was the first to pass a budget for years (remember how they tried to sell us, for political and personal reasons) , The fact that it is not right to transfer a budget except for a few months ?!), perhaps the greatest achievement.

This, along with structural reforms promoted by Lieberman, was liked by those who appreciate Israel's economic performance.

I know that many will not be happy to read the following sentence (and whoever claims that Israel has other considerations besides economic considerations - is right), but at least economically, there is nothing worse for Israel than another election campaign.

Less because of price (not negligible at all) and more because of its consequences that convey instability.

By the way politics, we will not go into this minefield, but it is worth mentioning that at least economically, there is no "zero sum game" here.

That is, the question is not who promoted the economy more, the Netanyahu-Katz government or the Bennett-Lieberman government.

To distill the truth into one sentence, it must be said that Israeli high-tech flourished regardless of the ruling parties. Just as renewed global armaments will bring the profits of the Israeli arms industry to a peak, whether the Bennett government survives or is replaced.

At the same time, credit is also due: to Netanyahu for the vaccination campaign that is entirely registered in his name and that made Israel the first country that managed to live alongside the corona.

To Lieberman, for the fact that he inherited a very good economic reality and was able to make it excellent, with the cessation of the Knesset, the transfer of a budget, the promotion of reforms and more.

Children are a joy, but also a constant increase in the housing crisis, especially as most of the natural increase is among the sectors with less participation in the labor force (Photo: ShutterStock)

The truth about the housing crisis that no politician would dare to voice

If there's something more tiring than fun about housing prices (and for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not complaining about those who look with wide eyes at the apartment's dream of receding, but at all the speculators on the way - contractors, realtors, "developers" with or without quotes and other stakeholders). Ask only the ideas offered on the way to the solution.

And yet, within the myriad of proposed solutions, it seems that no one is required to address one of the fundamental problems of the issue, since telling the truth, in this case, will complicate any politician wanting life.

Therefore, we will write it here, we: Even if the issue of land marketing is treated optimally, the NPA plans of all kinds will be fully realized, contractors will receive extensive permits to employ foreign workers and apartments at a reduced price will be raffled among eligible, we will remain with real estate distress.

How?

natural reproduction.

In Israel, the natural increase is one of the highest in the OECD countries, and anyone who rushes to "blame" the ultra-Orthodox, the Arabs and the national-religious public will be wrong.

True, these are the sectors where the birth rate is highest, but even among the secularists outside the Tel Aviv bubble, families with four or five children, who will be healthy, are a common sight.

This natural increase combined with the extension of life expectancy to a level where an existing property is "diverted" to one of the children when they are already retired (and we have not yet talked about the fact that sometimes the residential property was sold for the right to age peacefully in a sheltered housing project) And should not be mistaken, essential!) However he may not be able to satisfy.

So it is true that the statesman who will try to implement the Chinese birth control law in Israel has not yet been born, but perhaps it is time to turn the eyes of those seeking solutions to the housing crisis to welfare laws, which at least currently encourage natural growth. As too large for other industries in the Israeli economy.

Much like the exemption from recruitment for yeshiva students, child allowances have become a puppet that has arisen over its creator: if Ben-Gurion dreamed of a natural Jewish multiplicity, as a factor that would slightly balance the numerical inferiority vis-à-vis the Arab enemy.

After all, today those who benefit from child benefits are mainly the sectors whose participation in the labor force is the lowest - and the public should hear the truth even when it harms their most precious place.

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• Benjamin Netanyahu

• Avigdor Lieberman

• Naftali Bennett

• housing

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