Latet’s latest Alternative Poverty Report opens with a stark headline number: a 10% spike in Israel’s cost of living in just one year. The findings go further, painting a bleak picture where 22.3% of families and 28.7% of the population fall into multidimensional poverty, and where severe food insecurity affects roughly one in ten households. A typical middle-class lifestyle now costs ₪9,539 per person per month, or ₪24,396 for a family of four, while a two-breadwinner family earning minimum wage brings home barely ₪12,000—about half of what’s required to meet that standard. These numbers land like a cold slap: the gap between what Israelis earn and what life here costs is widening at a speed the government refuses to acknowledge.
You feel it every time you shop for basics or open a utility bill; the silent dread settling in isn’t imagination—it’s the system cracking under pressure. And against this backdrop, the government keeps pouring billions of shekels into the same politically loyal ultra-Orthodox sectors, creating a warped budget that prioritizes coalition survival over the survival of the people. It’s a strange spectacle: an economy straining under inflation while funds are disproportionately diverted into yeshiva stipends, special community programs, and blanket exemptions that shield one group from the very hardships crushing everyone else.
The uncomfortable truth is that the state budget has transformed into a machine for political patronage. Middle-class families who drive the economy get next to nothing. Soldiers’ families get symbolic crumbs. Young parents are stuck with impossible housing costs and childcare fees. Yet entire ultra-Orthodox communities receive protective layers of financial support, effectively insulating them from the rising cost of living that the rest of the country has no choice but to absorb. When a working couple in the north or center is spending half their income just to rent a modest apartment, being told “there’s no money” sounds like a bad joke—especially when the coalition keeps magically uncovering billions for one narrow sector.
What makes the situation even gloomier is that this isn’t just negligence; it’s policymaking that actively manufactures poverty. With a minimum-wage family bringing home half of what Latet defines as a middle-class standard, any responsible government would urgently reshuffle priorities. Instead, the current leadership doubles down on funding dependency rather than productivity, locking an entire society into a cycle where fewer people work, fewer contribute to the tax base, and more rely on public funds to get by. After a while, you can’t help wondering whether the goal is national resilience—or simply political self-preservation.
Israel deserves better than a budget designed to appease one sector at the expense of everyone else. The Latet report shouldn’t just be a warning; it’s a mirror held up to a government that seems determined not to look.
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