I live in Bnei Brak, but work in Ramat Gan. The high municipal taxes that my workplace sets aside for the municipality are divided only among Ramat Gan residents, who enjoy it and its fruits. I, who spend most of the day at work and support the restaurants and businesses in the area, don't enjoy the money my workplace pays to the municipality's coffers every month.
Despite the fact that the residents of Ramat Gan called me and my friends "parasites who rob the public purse," I bring money into the Ramat Gan municipality, which profits mainly from commercial space and businesses that pay it huge sums, while those residents who lamented the robbery of their city's public coffers actually create a loss for it. Such a situation is called "distributive injustice," and it is he who is at the head of the Torah storm in the State of Israel, whose existential threat that is about to collapse it is the concept that the citizens of the state have been forced to learn: the "Arnona fund."
In short: a law promoted in the State of Israel for years by both previous governments and from the left side of the political map, and which won and still enjoys unqualified support from the professional wing of the Ministry of Finance.
At length: Unlike municipal property taxes, which can be seen how it fairly serves the residents living in the city, business property taxes do not necessarily return to the tens of thousands of workers who come to work from other cities, and return at the end of the day to places where infrastructure is poor and quality of life is low.
Such a reality creates a situation in which mayors prefer to build for businesses rather than residences, at the expense of residential space. According to the new proposal, between 10 and 28 percent of business property taxes for all workplaces will be transferred to encouraging residential construction in weaker cities, which will lead to a decline in housing prices throughout the country.
But even if Netivot builds another Eiffel Tower on its territory, it will still not enjoy the attractiveness and advantages that towers in Tel Aviv have. It's not forces.
And this is what the state is trying to balance and solve in order to enable the periphery to grow as well. There may be professional shortcomings with the proposal, but instead of a substantive discussion in the corridors of the treasury, the mayors of the powerful cities absorbed the system and decided to recycle what has worked so far and always works: drag the ultra-Orthodox to the event, sow panic, paint it in the colors of the Kaplan protest and cry out that the country must be saved from the parasites who rob the public purse.
Some of the founders of the "The Handmaid's Tale" exhibit completed the puzzle by calling on the audience to join the protests in all parts of the country. Got lost? So do we. Mainly because the main beneficiaries of the law are secular cities such as Kiryat Bialik, Ashkelon, Ofakim, Acre, Afula, Nahariya and more, unlike Bnei Brak, for example, a city that enjoys very high revenues from business property taxes due to the vibrant business towers it has built in its territory, and it will be one of the biggest victims of the law.
Many are jumping on the bandwagon of hatred for the ultra-Orthodox: it is available, inclusive, and has room to tune them. It does not require proficiency, and produces fantastic results in a short time. The ultra-Orthodox have become accustomed to being the national punching bag. In this case, those who will lose are all residents of the State of Israel.
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