Lieberman, do not divide my money into whiners

Mr. Minister of Finance, I have a small request for you: Save my money and do not rush to distribute it to business owners who demand compensation from you.

I mean, there are few who really deserve it, but the rest have not yet finished thinking about what they will do with the money they earned in 2021

Nir Kipnis

10/01/2022

Monday, 10 January 2022, 12:49 Updated: 13:07

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Mr. Minister of Finance, I have a small request for you: Save my money and do not rush to distribute it to business owners who demand compensation from you.

Although we do not know each other personally, I will make it clear from the beginning that I am also independent. I, too, have a full stomach - and in my case not even a small one - for the way the state behaves independently: on the one hand it calls us a "growth engine" and on the other it treats us as criminals, unless proven otherwise. I am glad that under the current government some small steps have been taken to change the situation, but there is still a long way to go.

In the early days of the Corona, almost two years ago, I too was anxious for a living, and to my delight I can say that the State of Israel, under your predecessor in office, was there for me as well. For about a year, until the economy gradually returned to routine (and after the first few weeks of losing its temper), the system began to tick: every now and then I received a phone call from my accountant informing me of compensation or a grant. Some of them in small amounts, others more significant - and the knowledge that just like me, other business owners also received compensation, would have encouraged even before the joy of the relatively rapid recovery that the Israeli economy underwent, a phenomenon unparalleled in the global economy.

But some of my colleagues, mostly big and familiar names from me, have made it clear why the state sometimes treats us like a god - well, if not criminals - certainly as deceitful.

In fact, the leaders of the call for compensation (and it is good that they did) hurried to distribute dividends when it became clear that the extent of the damage was not as severe as they feared or that the opening after the vaccination flooded their businesses with new customers, who now buy or vacation abroad

. The demand now rolling in the court to prevent self-employed people from returning grants they received illegally annoys me - mainly because when they demanded (during your predecessor's term) to be "like Germany", who first paid her self-employed to help and clarified that the account would be held at the end of the year. Receiving funds based on their self-reports, clarifies that this is conditional money, such that if it turns out he was not eligible, it will be returned to the state treasury.

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With your permission I want to leap into the fifth wave, not before I linger a bit on this couplet "state coffers."

The state coffers are our money, of the citizens, every shekel that goes out of it for one purpose is necessarily deducted from another purpose.

It is important for me to emphasize this, especially because lately it seems that some of my friends are sure that these are funds that are somewhere in the safe and not painted in budget colors for purposes such as health, welfare, security, education and more.

Now we'll move, with your permission, to Omicron.

I'm sure some of the business has been hurt.

How many were injured?

This is another question: there are those who have suffered a direct hit, such as airlines and those engaged in foreign tourism, with the closure of the sky.

Others suffered an implied injury.

what does it mean? It is true that there is no closure, but there is isolation that already encompasses hundreds of thousands and could reach up to a third of the country’s population, so traffic in malls, streets and restaurants is sparse. There are also those who are afraid to get infected and stay at home: cancel a reservation at a restaurant, refrain from going to a movie or a show, cancel a weekend at a hotel. These businesses are vulnerable, but - and this is important to say - they are not closed.

In fact, the decline in crowd traffic coming through their gates is for most of them far beyond the most generous outline they could only fantasize about a year ago, when they sought to operate in a 10%, 20% 50% format - the main thing being something to pass on at the box office.

That is not the case today.

Even if we assume that we reach a state of a million insulators, and another million left at home to host them to society out of necessity or voluntarily, we have reached a little less than a quarter of the purchasing power.

In other words, beyond very specific industries, 75% of the economic activity in malls, street shops and restaurant businesses is supposed to continue as a series.

After all, the compensation provided by the previous government, whether through grants or through the outline of the Knesset, did not cover 100% of the losses, so what is the shout about?

Eilat.

Those who charged the Israelis for a modest hotel room the price of a suite in Manhattan, who will not come now to ask for compensation (Photo: ShutterStock)

Demand and supply: restaurants, hotels and fashion stores

Let's take the restaurateurs as an example, and of course in general. I have many friends in the field and I admit that I felt their pain during the long months of uncertainty during which some of them closed businesses that were dreams of years. My heart is with you.

But whoever persevered, thanks to grants or thanks to hard work in the summer of 2020, the days "between closures", came to March 2021 with a healthy appetite for work. Happily all the data worked in his favor: a herd of unicorns galloped through the streets of Tel Aviv, and with it a bunch of young people in their third and fourth decade of life who I hired did not know what to do with the money - and not as a metaphor.

Some bought a second and third and fourth apartment ... others simply blew bills of thousands of shekels on the table in the most expensive restaurants in Israel. So good was the situation among many of the restaurateurs, some of whom raised prices not by 5%, the rate of increase on which we "rip" today (and rightly so!) Companies like Osem or Snow, but by 50%. Why? Demand and supply.

Do not get me wrong, Mr. Minister of Finance, my eyes are not narrowed on them, as I accompanied some of them closely while crying (in real tears) about their fate in the early days of the plague, but - while happy for their well-being, I can not hear the poor voices they make now : Supply and Demand?

Please friends: 2021 has been the best year in your history. Not to be outdone, some of you admitted that he was ready for an "outline" according to which he would rest for a year - on condition that he would later receive a year of income like the one that ended a little over a week ago. So what are you crying about? For a wave that faded, according to all estimates, in about three weeks, left you with half an empty restaurant?

The same is true of some of the hotels that rushed from inbound to inbound tourism: when you took from me for a night in a standard hotel a price they would not dare charge for a suite in the heart of Manhattan, you rolled your eyes at the sky and explained supply and demand. So friends, the demand has dropped a bit - please deal.

We have not said a word about fashion stores either: I remember how in late 2019, just before the corona

invaded our lives, they complained that the online was killing them, that people were buying at sites abroad and not in the mall.

For them to sell more with less costs of rent, workers and more) but also supply disruptions on the part of a large number of international sites, until the biggest factor in the field made it his motto: Book now and get the shipment today, which no international site can guarantee (hint : This is the same one who went on a

rampage

in an emergency aid claim, only to approve a dividend on the profits of 2020)

. You probably know better than me the state tax revenue column, which has long since left behind that of 2019 (and not just because of high-tech).

Therefore, Mr. Lieberman, I want to strengthen your hands for not rushing to distribute my money and that of the silent majority of Israeli citizens to business owners who suddenly a less successful month, after a peak year, seems to them like a catastrophe that requires compensation from the state.

It is true that your predecessor in office was quick to distribute money, but he did so under different and much more justified conditions than those currently prevailing in the Israeli economy.

In the photo: two Norwegians, three Finns and an Icelander.

For those who claim compensation from the state, there was someone to learn from (Photo: Knesset Spokeswoman, Danny Shem Tov)

Establish a hotline for those who are really hurt

Still, with all my appreciation for your firm line (especially when you see the softness of some of your government colleagues) I have two main caveats before I finish admiring your steadfastness in the face of the bonfire that some of my independent colleagues have decided to ignite:

the first is that a hotline must be established. In the tax authority that will assist businesses, with an emphasis on small ones, that are directly affected by the current isolation policy. Moreover, it is important to help large businesses as well as they will be quick to hurt the weakest among their employees, in case of a drop in profit. I just ask that in case you decide to help - with money intended for the health, education, safety and welfare of my children - also for such businesses, that you hang the aid on the promise that in case of cuts, the first to be harmed will be shareholders and managers - and not cleaning workers for example.

So far the first caveat.

The second caveat is much easier to explain, but difficult to implement: One of the reasons business owners allow themselves to drive such pigs is just because they get from you, the elected officials, a great example of how to do it. They know that if the government had to be saved before an important vote, you would now appoint thirty more ministers without a portfolio - and enlist not only Norwegian law but also Finnish and Icelandic, costing hundreds of millions, to save your seats.

I'm not naive, it's part of the political game and you did not invent the rules, Mr. Minister, you just used them to your advantage. Still, when I see this conduct, suddenly the store owner from the mall or his friend the restaurateur, seems a little less cunning to me. So come on, look at some personal example - and then, not only will I applaud you when you finish the speech about that full restaurant from the industrial area in Modiin, but I might even consider doing what I did not do before and voting for you.

Until then, Honorable Minister, be strong and courageous in preserving all of our money - and hopefully the bet you made that the corona will turn, starting in a few weeks, into a footnote in Professor Les' memoir, will still pay off for all of us.

Yours, a self-employed person who wants nothing from you other than conditions to earn a decent living.

I know it's a little hard to believe, but most of us are.

You've already seen the others on TV.

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