Our Task

This summer has been an interesting one in Israel.  What started as a successful consumer protest against the high cost of cottage cheese ended in a group of radical communists manipulating the public’s desire for a better and cheaper standard of living. 

The cost of housing, consumer goods, electronics, food, drugstore items and gasoline are high in this country.  Part of the reason is the incredibly high taxes.  We pay 16% VAT on all products and services (with the exception of fresh fruits and vegetables), 120% tax on automobiles and tens of percent on most electronics.  Further, government regulation limiting the import of honey (see the New Liberal Movements lawsuit over lack of honey imports - Hebrew) , dairy products and other basic foodstuffs raise the cost of living.  Another reason is the lack of competition in basic industries.  Two banks (Leumi and Poalim) control over 60% of the banking market.  We have only three cellular phone companies, two internet infrastructure companies, two main supermarket chains.   

The centralized economy is itself a legacy of the socialist way of the past and the socialist mindset that continues to plague policy makers to this day.  When the government privatized and opened up industries over the last 20 years it ended up selling most assets to the same few families and companies that were cronies of the old socialist  leaders of the 50’s and 60’s.  Part of the reason was simply the result of being part of the “good ole boy” network.  Part of the reason though goes to the heart of socialism itself – a distrust of “the people”.  Instead of distributing shares to the citizens of the country the politicians and bureaucrats were convinced that only centralized leadership of the companies in the form of a core, main investor could assure the smooth running of the company.

The enemies of the free market in Israel are not only the radical socialists of the upper middle-class protest movement but the owners of the big conglomerates (who the press love calling the “tycoons”) who made and make much of their money off of government regulation and monopolies.

Our task here then, is to expose the opponents of free markets and free people and to help our policy makers, journalists and citizens  realize that free market capitalism is not only economically superior to socialism and crony-capitalism, but it is morally superior, too.