Real or fictitious I do not know, but Mrs. Cohen and her husband, an employee in the hi-tech sector, earn together 20,000 NIS monthly, according to Lapid. Tragically, they have not been able to travel to the United States for a vacation in two years and even more tragically will not be able to afford to purchase an apartment for any of their three children at some point in the future.
If you have opened any Israeli news website, or Israeli commentary site, or turned on the radio or television, you will already have heard the criticism of Yair Lapid. You will have heard how by his example he has shown how disconnected from reality he is. You will have heard how he does not even realize who the middle class is, the middle class he promised to fight for, the middle class that saw him as the best option and voted for him. You will have seen the charts showing that the Cohens are really pretty close to the top 10%, extremely upper-middle-class people. The real people struggling are the people making far less than 20k NIS monthly, the people who find it difficult to pay the ever-increasing electricity and water bills at the same time as paying the mortgage or rent and the ever-increasing food bills. They do not even consider trips abroad for vacation, and their biggest fear that is relevant on a day to day basis has nothing to do with the lack of ability to buy an apartment 15 or 20 years down the road.
Personally, I have not traveled to the US in 6 years, despite most of my family living there. It is not much of a concern for me, and I have sense of urgency to visit the US, and I, at this point in my life, only plan to visit should there be a significant occasion such as a family simcha. I am happy with vacationing in Israel, and have easily come to terms with the fact that it is too expensive to fly my family abroad for vacations. We pay a mortgage, have all those bills, have 8 kids (keneina hara, ben porat yosef, tfoo tfoo tfoo), have no expectation of being able to afford to buy 3 apartments in the future for our kids, let alone 8, and I think we are still in a pretty decent situation. There are people earning far less than what we earn, there are people struggling much worse than us and Yair Lapid needs to figure out who it is that is really struggling, and not just dramatically help those, via dramatic announcement in ministry meetings and on Facebook posts, whose biggest concerns seem to be, at least in Lapid's words, that they cannot take their foreign vacation and buy 3 more apartments at some point in the future.
That being said, I reject the sharp criticism of Lapid as well. Yes, there are people, the majority of the country actually, earning significantly less than the Cohens, struggling far more, and pining for more modest vacations and more modest wedding packages for their kids. Their struggle is with the rent/mortgage on a monthly basis, with filling the car at the gas station 3-4 times a month, with paying the electricity bill, despite making a semi-decent salary by Israeli standards. Perhaps the Cohens from Hadera should not be Lapid's main concern, but the problem he mentioned is a big problem.
It also does make me wonder - if the Cohens can't make it, earning about 20k per month with 3 kids, how is the average Israeli family getting by on so much less? The average Israeli household income is, I think, 12k. Sure, plenty are in overdraft at the bank, but most people are getting by, even if just scraping by. And even more so, how do haredi families get by, with far more kids, on average, and much less income. And even more so, how do kollel families get by, with even more kids and even less income???
The Cohens suffer from the same problem that the rest of us suffer from. Taxes are high, Costs are high and ever-increasing, and he should make it the concern of the ministry, as a top priority, to make people's lives easier. If salaries would go up, if taxes would go down, if the electric company would be reined in, if the water companies would be brought under some sort of control (suddenly charging VAT, paying high salaries, charging increasingly high prices for water, even with record setting winter rains), it would ease the burden on the backs of a tremendous percentage of Israelis. And, who knows, maybe then the Cohens and others will even be able to travel abroad and buy apartments for their kids!
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In February the only Reform Jewish Day School in Toronto is trying a one off experiment to help the "Middle Class" parents.
ReplyDeleteThe definition they are using...
$150 - $250k with one kid
$200 - $300k with two kids
$250 - $350k with three or more kids
http://www.cjnews.com/jewish-learning/leo-baeck-launches-tuition-subsidies
When discussing issues like fighting poverty, fighting for the middle class, we need to define what that means. Once we have a working definition we can evaluate if we are accomplishing these goals. Is Israel the only country in the world where one would consider themselves poor if they can't buy a home for their children?
In all the whining of the 2011 protests, the fact is that many Israelis buy their first home with help from their parents and it is a given that they will also be able to help their children in 20-25 years. Chances are that they will if they start saving like the parents, or if they are rather (my assumption) spending that away instead. You see, the average parents used to live fairly simple, but these days, the 30-50 age group does have a fairly high life-style and I see this with the people I work with. They have someone large apartments in good neighbourhoods and this naturally also brings with it the 'necessity' to live like the Cohens and their lifestyle. Baruch Hashem, the people in my community do not care what stroller our baby sits in, what car we drive, what brands my kids wear (though everyone does appreciate the quality of Children's Place and Gap Kids :-) or if we travel overseas.
DeleteI think all the criticism of Lapid is legitimate and justified, but ... also it is understandable that Lapid was voted into office by these 'white' upper-middle class yuppies and he is just as sectoral as the next MoK. Most people following Lapid on facebook are his upper-middle class constituents and he was speaking to them. I did not listen to his acceptance speech, but I also doubt that he announced that he would represent everyone, and his avoidance of the chametz selling as well as sending FB posts on Shabbat show he has not yet (there is still hope) realized that he is a minister in the government and a representative of us all.
ReplyDeleteThe tycoons that funded his campaign run are his type of people and definitely expect him to be friendly to big business.
Lapid was brought up in an upper middle class environment. In the army where most of us meet different people, I assume he served with other white people with connections to get into dover Tzahal. Another station in life, university, where we meet people from different backgrounds was also not part of Lapid's life. So he worked hard as a journalist and followed in his dad's footsteps, and became very successful, being a host on tv ($$$) to the point of being super-rich and not seeing others from a meter.
I hope that Lapid does do tshuva and comes back to reality that most of us live in.