Urgent Emergency Plan for Costs of Living needed. Who will be the Israeli Milei, Trump or Netanyahu?

The cost of living is enormous in Israel. Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest metropolitan area, is the most expensive city in the world (2022).

As reported by VonNaftali, around 30% of Israelis live below the poverty line. The high prices are caused by Israel’s oligopolistic market structures, where around 20 families dominate the market in Israel.

These structures drive prices to astronomical heights with inferior product quality. Customer service is an unknown word in Israel. Israel has neither a free market economy nor competition. Fact.

Israel’s consumers have to live with defective goods at high prices. Even European market products. As soon they are produced in license in Israel you are confronted with poor quality. The legal structures protect these monopoly structures.

One reason why the economic elites are so keen to prevent judicial reform. It could endanger their monopoly profits. Additionally, I never noticed that the system of the ombudsman tried to enforce more social justice. They are more keen to prosecute right-wing politicians and to block their political projects.

The bureaucracy and its around 70 state-owned companies, almost all of them generate profits, make life difficult and even more expensive. Bureaucracy costs a lot of money, which has to be collected through taxes. The bureaucracy costs a lot of time and is a pain in Israel. Finally, a non-transparent labour market and a housing market with skyrocketing prices.

This makes Israel a rather socialist and very expensive society in the service of the ‘friends-bring-friends networks’ and the elites of the states. The bill is paid by the poor people in Israel. They simply fall through the grate. The elites and their networks secured for themselves a lot of privileges and selective access.

The government talks a lot and does little, and in the meantime, the Israeli consumer is dealing with a highly centralized economy and almost non-existent regulations.

And Nu? 3 Food Suppliers control 85% Market.

The State Control Committee, chaired by MK Mickey Levy (Yesh Atid), convened in the Knesset on Monday for a debate on coping with the cost of living in Israel. Much of what Levy says is correct and was also correct when Yesh Atid was part of the previous government and provided the prime minister.

During the term of Yesh Atid, nothing changed. The cost of living was also astronomically high. In the year of Lapid’s government, Tel Aviv was the most expensive city in the world. The oligopolistic structures were not, unsurprisingly, touched by Lapid.

The political echelons and the economic echelons in Israel are closely connected and deeply intermingled. They profit from each other and stabilize each other. The average citizen literally pays the bill. The unelected elites hijacked the state and squeeze the citizens.

Before the backdrops of raising prices for water and electricity and the increase of VAT, a price explosion for 2025 is imminent. Why? Because they can.

YNET summarized the structural problem of Israel’s economy based on facts provided by the NGO ‘Lobby 99’: “Just three food suppliers control more than 85% of the sales in 20 food product categories. The market share of the five largest suppliers in the food and consumer market reached 37.5% in 2022.” A similar picture we have in all branches in Israel.

Israel has become again a socialist economy. Israel has a somewhat strange socialist economy, where losses and risks are socialized, but profits are strictly privatized, and only a few have access to making profits.

The debate was without any results but provided some facts more about the dire situation in Israel.

Prices in Israel are 38% higher than in the OECD

“National Economic Council Chair Prof. Avi Simhon presented to the committee the main challenges in coping with the cost of living in Israel, and the achievements of the ministerial committee for dealing with this issue, which he coordinates. Prof. Simhon said that the national index indeed showed that the level of prices in Israel was 38% higher than [the OECD] average, and showed a dramatic gap of 52% in some areas. He said, “The reality is not good. Israel is very expensive, and some of this gap stems from government policy.” Prof. Simhon stated that part of the gap was attributed to very high taxation, such as on vehicles and fuel, but 42% was related to other components not directly explained by taxes.” (quote from the press release of the Knesset from 24.12.2024).

Unbelievable. What we see here is the result of decades-old neglect and failure of the decision-makers aka elites in Israel. Not just the politicians.

To put it less kindly: A closed caste has shamelessly enriched itself under the guise of “Balaganism”: a mixture of a state-centred socialist, authoritarian “Zionism” and mafia-like requests to show “Savlanut” if you ask for well-earned and guaranteed rights and claims.

One must be astonished by the astonishment of Prof. Shimon when he says in the said Knesset Committee: “We pinned great hopes on Carrefour, and they slightly disappointed us.” Trying to blame Carrefour and make it emotional is completely out of place and a wrong analysis.

As long as you don’t change the structures, every player will behave following the structures (and laws). And in a market without competition, the entry of one player without changing the market rules changes absolutely nothing. That’s the way it is.

‘Lobby 99‘ CEO Linor Deutsch called upon the Government to take action: “Instead of making things easier for the public, the Government is refraining from dismantling monopolies or advancing competition.“

A chart from Lobby 99 is selfexplaining

“There are five mega-monopolies here who are whining that they have to raise prices because of the rise in raw materials (…) As we sit in front of the data, wheat has fallen by 12.8% this year, rice has fallen by 20.3%, while at the same time, the same products that are made only from these things have risen by many percentage points. Is anyone doing anything about it?“, said Linor Deutsch.

To conclude: Correct what ‘Lobby 99’ demands. Dismantle the monopolies. I may add, in a radical way. The ‘Milei Way’. And bureaucracy, one must add, has to be dismantled, too. 36 ministries are a big way too much. The state needs at maximum 6 ministries.

Ways out?

However, the elected government, our elected elites cannot even dismiss individual civil servants, so it should overturn entire monopoly structures? Not likely.

The core problem is like in the USA, Argentina, Canada, UK, France, or Germany: Rule of the unelected elites of the deep state and no free markets. Israel has the same problem. Unelected elites have established themselves as the fourth branch of the state.

Suddenly we, in Israel, have an unelected, non “constitutional” fourth branch of the state: the unelected elites of the deep state and its bureaucracy. BUT: Israel does not have a Netanyahu, Trump or Milei for domestic affairs.

However, in foreign affairs, Israel has the best man in the world: Netanyahu. But for domestic affairs, Israel has no Netanyahu, no Trump, no Milei.

There is nobody. Israel is in dire need of domestic justicial reform for more democracy, free speech, and a free market to bring down the costs of living.*

39% of all children in Israel live in poverty. That is not Judaism anymore. Israel must become again more democratic, and more Jewish. Jewish values forbid very clearly to dumb Jewish children into poverty while a few get very very rich due to unfair aka non-Jewish conditions.

Israel is in dire need of a ‘Milei’. Who will be the ‘Milei’ of Israel cutting down the privileges of the unelected elites and friends-bring-friends networks to dismantle the monopolies under which Israel groans?

*Sidenote: free speech for the citizen, not for the state. The state has no right to free speech. Just the citizen. The NGOs of the elites like the Kaplanisti or Brother in Arms should be dealt with under the same enforcement as right-wing organizations have to suffer. No more selective enforcement to the advantage of the pro-elitist and left-wing globalist NGOs like the Kaplanistim or Brother in Arms. And Yes, it will be great to stop funding media with tax money without monopolizing the media through the backdoor.