Israel is an expensive country, it's not new, and it's been felt for years in the supermarket, gas station, mall, restaurants, and in fact - everywhere. The phrase "cost of living" has become a common colloquialism. But now Israel is no longer just expensive, but the most expensive country among the developed countries.
The OEDC analyzed the prices in its member countries, put the data into an uncomplicated formula, but certainly not one that we will expand on in the pages of the newspaper, and produced the data on the cost of living in each of the countries.
Thus, we discovered that Israel is 38% more expensive than the average price in all countries, and this figure is what provided us with the top spot in the global cost of living index. In second and honorable place - Switzerland, which until 2022 was the most expensive country in the world.
But prices are not everything, and wages in Israel should also be examined, since this is how the purchasing power of the public is measured. If we discover that wages in Israel are significantly higher than average, then our situation is not bad.
Once again, the organization examined the numbers from all countries, mixed the formula and produced data according to which wages in Israel are about 17% lower than the average in the organization's countries. In other words, we earn less and pay much more.
These figures are published during one of the most difficult months of the year – August.
Parents are collapsing under the burden of expenses during the summer vacation, and at the same time spending a lot of money on preparations for the start of the school year, and on the horizon we can already see the High Holidays and the loaded carts for Rosh Hashanah. Still, the malls are filled to capacity and the lines at Ben Gurion Airport are getting longer.
I recently spoke with the CEO of a large travel agency, who explained the phenomenon by saying that during the pandemic we didn't spend money on entertainment, the sums piled up, and now we're compensating ourselves for the period when we locked ourselves in our homes. This perhaps explains only part of the phenomenon, because payment at the supermarket does not fall under the definition of family spending time on vacation.
What is happening here is not a momentary price increase, but prolonged neglect that costs us all a lot of money.
In 2011, the year the social protests against the cost of living erupted, prices in Israel were only 5% higher than the OECD average. The combination of cottage prices and milkies, representative of the protest, with soaring housing prices were enough to bring hundreds of thousands of people to the streets.
Now the situation is much worse. Home prices are sky-high, supermarket prices are crazy and high interest rates, designed to cool the cost of living, make it difficult to pay loan and mortgage repayments. This is not a matter of fate, and it is possible, necessary and necessary to deal with market failures in the economy.
All governments promise to remove barriers, promote reforms and lower prices, but none of them have really tried. The government's handling of the issue comes down to cosmetics and PR for ministers, who act as if they know how much milk costs, while we continue to pay and complain.
The Israeli government must wake up, but this will not happen until the public wakes up on its own, but is busy with other, more important things – to survive August and preserve democracy.
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