Yair Lapid

Haredim Won’t be Drafted After All, Yair “Draft’m All” Lapid has a Fit

rafifarber Israeli Politics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

So, surprise surprise, the Haredi politicians got back into the mafia and decided to shut down the whole “שוויון בנטל” garbage, where the logic is we should all be equally enslaved to our masters and no group should have more freedom than any other group.

There are few terms more twisted and causes more backward and opportunistic phrases uttered than “equality of burden”. It’s the perfect way to take the resentment of government slaves and turn them against citizens who do not enslave them rather than against the government itself. It’s the ruler’s way to divide and conquer, and Pretty Boy Lapid constantly uses this to get himself more votes on the back of enslaving entire groups of people for 3 years.

What I love about the Haredi parties is that they are a vacuum on government spending, forcing the state to spend more on welfare and less on other regulations. If the government is going to spend, it may as well be on welfare rather than more regulatory bodies or war.

No, I am not a fan of welfare, but I’d rather see massive amounts of welfare rather than massive amounts of military spending or “education” spending and general growth in the bureaucracy. Since Israel is at least sort of not horrid in balancing its budget (it’s bad, but not horrible) and the state needs the welfare to keep the Haredi votes, the more welfare the less government spending on worse things.

They believe in taking anything they can from the state but refuse to pay in by being drafted or being taxed, and that is a very good thing. This is the very “burden” that Lapid wants “equalized.” I would rather just see it lightened.

It’s like a bully saying “I have to steal $20 every day, and instead of it coming from you alone, it would be better ןf everyone contributed.”

I say, instead, just steal less please.

The haredim will never be drafted. Even if the law passes fully and finally, they won’t go. There will be riots. In the end all the negativity will result in the end of the draft entirely. That is the real and only solution.

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Universal Rent Control Coming to Israel

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

Swedish lefty economist Assar Lindbeck once said back in 1972,

“In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”

Assar Lindbeck, The Political Economy of the New Left (New York: Harper and Row, 1972)

Well, rent control is coming to Israel. The price control frenzy will get worse and worse as the Bank of Israel keeps printing more and more money and the inflation seeps into the consumer sector. Tzipi Livni introduced this gem of a law, teaming up with Pretty Boy Yair Lapid. Those two are the dynamic duo of destruction it seems.

From Ynet:

שר האוצר, יאיר לפיד, ושרת המשפטים, ציפי לבני, הציגו היום (ה’) את הצעת החוק שלהם לפיקוח על שוק השכרת הדירות בישראל. על פי ההצעה, החל מתחילת השנה הבאה ועד סוף שנת 2019, תחול מגבלה על יכולתו של משכיר להעלות את שכר הדירה משנה לשנה. המשכיר יוכל לקבוע באופן חופשי את שכר דירה אחת לשלוש שנים ולאחר מכן להעלותו בשיעור העלייה של מדד המחירים לצרכן בלבד.

Minister of Finance Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni presented their bill today for rent controls. According to the bill, starting at the beginning of next year until the end of 2019, landlords will be prohibited from raising their rents. A landlord can freely decide what rent he will charge once every three years, and after that he can only raise it in accordance with the consumer price index.

Before I tear this apart, a short little thing on the harmfulness of price controls in general. A price is set by supply and demand. The price point is the point at which the number of sellers for a good equals the number of buyers. It is not set by greed, nor by luck, nor by generosity. Rents do not go higher because suddenly human nature changes and landlords get greedier than they once were. Landlords do not raise rents because they get greedier. They raise rents because that’s the price that buyers are willing to pay. It’s what they can get. Rents go higher because the amount of buyers at a lower price are greater than the number of sellers at that price. So the price goes up in order to equal out the buyers and sellers.

That’s it.

If your goal is to bring rents down, you can do one of two things. Lower demand, or increase supply. In order to lower demand, you would either have to kill people, expel people, or else convince them that they don’t really want a place to live and they should go forage in the Jerusalem forest instead. You’d need a really good Zen public education system to get that done.

So really, the only thing that can be done to lower rents is to increase supply. But this is the ONLY THING that the Israeli government DOES NOT WANT TO DO. They love building freezes instead.

So in their genius, loathsome Lapid and Livni propose a rent control law. What this means is that now, by arbitrary decree, the price of housing could end up being lower, by law, than the market price. What will then happen is that the number of buyers will be greater than the number of sellers at that price, and you will end up with a shortage, meaning people willing to rent at that price but unable to do so because there is no more supply.

Or even worse, in the Bronx in the 1980’s, the rent that landlords were allowed by politicians to charge renters was lower than the taxes that the politicians insisted that the landlords pay THEM. As a result, guaranteed a loss if they rented out a place, they simply abandoned their buildings and entire neighborhoods were destroyed and turned into crack houses. The picture below is of rent-controlled Bronx circa 1980.

As for the technical stupidity of this law, to base rent on the CPI index is entirely circular. The CPI depends on housing rents.

The more effective this law is, meaning the wider the spread between the price allowed and the free market price for rents, the more devastating the consequences will be. If landlords are not allowed to raise prices for three years but allowed to ask whatever price they think they can get now, they won’t take a risk of renting it out for anything below what they think they would need 3 years from now to cover their costs and maintain a profit. In other words, this law will push up rents even faster to where they would be 3 years from now assuming constant price inflation.

Batten down the hatches guys, it’s gonna get rough. How rough could it get? See below for more 1980’s Bronx.

Bronx2

 

 

 

SHOCKER Finance Minister Yair Lapid is a Corrupt Playboy

rafifarber Economics, Israeli Politics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

Who would have guessed that the Minister of Male Grooming Yair Lapid is a corrupt spendthrift little pisher.

According to an investigation by Ynet, he took a trip to the US in October 2013 that cost, somehow, 54,000 NIS. His sidekick, some politician named Micki Levi, the deputy Finance Minister, had a refrigerator installed in his car for 3,534 NIS. The list of profligacy is long.

The really funny part though is to see the various different government apparatuses try to steal from one another. How? License renewal for all the cars driven by gang members of the Finance Ministry cost 529,000 NIS last year. This of course goes right to the pockets of the gang members of the Transportation Ministry which charges monopoly prices on license renewal by outlawing all competition. The head of that gang is Yisrael Katz, who really looks and acts like Boss Tweed.

Boss Katz Tweed

So Lapid isn’t “spending” half a million shekels on license renewal. He’s just transferring the money to another government office, that of transportation. Same with the million shekels he spent on gas. Half of it goes to Katz and his disgusting 100% Blu Tax on gasoline.

Lapid may be corrupt, but he’s a beginner compared to Katz.

Half a million shekels for holiday gifts including Pesach, Purim, and Rosh Hashana, because being a tax receiver isn’t enough. This is for 1,000 tax receivers who “work” for Lapid in the Finance Gang.

But that’s nothing compared to the Computerize the Government program, that has been going on since 2004 and was supposed to be finished in 2006. 82,000,000 NIS just this year, eight years behind schedule, who smells a computer-industrial complex here? BOONdoggle.

But we should all be proud to pay taxes, as I heard a Rabbi say recently in his Rosh Hashana sermon. The Rabbi is also a tax receiver, partly.

The Finance gang says it will cut all unnecessary spending. Sure. If I ever head the Bank of Israel, I will cut off the money at the source, so if they want to spend that much, they’ll have to tax you for it directly instead of have me print it for them and tax you through inflation.

The whole article, in Hebrew.