They plough all the money in to building houses for the harideem in the occupied terrotries and screw everyone else/

If bread was not subsidized most of Israelis will die of hunger. Israeli military officials is vetting news to be published These two characteristic make Israel a 3rd world country!

Israel haven't even had the government for 4 years, and the world is in an economic crisis. If it werent for the palestinian assholes any government could focus on this instead of how to please the pallys and the international community. As the article points out one thing is low percentage of working people among Arabs and Haredim, this would partly be solved by Lieberman's citizen law by getting ungrateful wellfare dwelling Israel hating Arabs and Neturei Karta out of here. Israel leftists would destroy the last parts of Israel, and with leftists I mean anything left of Labor. If you hate Israel so much why don't you leave with your boy friend Gregg to gentile world?

What utter rubbish. You've clearly never been to Israel, and seen all the fantastic, fresh produce piled high in the markets! True, beef and lamb are more expensive there than in the UK, but then the UK has huge areas of grazing that costs them little to maintain, whereas grassland dries off in the heat of the Israeli summer. Israeli-grown produce tends to be less expensive than ours, and of much better quality (fresher, tastier). I can eat healthily much more easily in Israel than I can in the UK. And UK food prices have shot up over the last couple of years as well - there's a global recession right now, don't ya know. Importing food requires fuel, and that's expensive.

Israel survived the worst of the recession but it was affected and recession or no recession all economies have good times and bad. At the beginning of the century had an boost but now things are leveling. Wages in Israel have always been lower thn most western countries. Blaming it all on military spending is easy but not the source. The housing is always going to be very high becase of the counties ghetto mentality where most the Jews are Living on the coast and in the centre so naturally you want to live in an enclosed space prices will be high. If we actually developed the Negev and Galilee which we keep saying is an vision of the future since 1948 we could build out rather than up bringing down prices. In recent years we had a property boom mainly becuse if the influx of French olim wit money driving up prices. Only in Israel is privatization seen as something bad, in other countries I gives people choice an raises money for government. We need to break from our socialist past where business was bad sate ownership was good. This report is Oversimplified and doesn't show reasons for these conclusions

I am more concerned about the comments made about education in this article as I have always understood that the Israeli education system is to be lauded. Here in UK young people start off their working life with massive debt. The cost of housing has been inflated all over the world by easy credit.

Israels number 1 export should be the Arabs....

At the fondations of the problem we find that is the difficulty to the people to find good job conditions and decent salaries that prevent them to reach the basics of daily life.The work market in Israel seems the one in Europe in 1900 : no real rights, no decent salaries, only stress for the families.

"According to the figures, in 2009 Israelis had to save up for 7.7 years of work to buy an apartment, compared to 6.8 years in Australia, 5.1 in England and 2.9 in the United States. The report notes that the survey's editors defined a situation in which a person has to save up for more than 1.5 years to buy apartment as "seriously unaffordable housing."" How long you think it would take to save up money to buy an apartment in France specially in Paris or Germany ? I can tell you , 50 years ! if you don´t come into an inheritance.for an not superb 100 m² apartment in Paris you pay more than 1.3 millions US $.

I was visiting my family in England during the festivals and I was amazed by how high food prices are. The likes of Tesco & Asda are huge and have real buying power so they can offer things dirt cheap. Israeli supermarkets don't have that buying power because they are so much smaller but quite a few products in Israel seem to be cheaper or no more expensive than in the UK. With kosher meat even thogh Israel has to import more animals than the UK does its still around the same sort of price. So if Israel is so much more expensive why are the prices comparable to or cheaper tha the UK giants ? In Israel they also don't have tuition fees like in England so I really don't know what's worse England or Israel which has just got this report about how bad it is.

Clearly this 'report' has a certain political agenda. Dollars to donuts it was released to downplay any economic advances that Netanyahu may boast about before the election. To all the dimwitted, it is plainly obvious that certain forces are trying very hard to unseat Netanyahu. Can anyone spell? O B A M A

Its good to be critical and aim for better conditions .Parts of Europe don't look too good and it could take decades Spain has 50% youth unemployment Greece is overloaded due to lack of German compensation for WW2Many are leaving Ireland and the Negev and galil are cheap I believe.Its not good to have so many people clustered and economic redistribution it's hard as people are for themselves and their families but mansions and villas ought be reduced and money diverted to security and infrastructure.The army and police ought be better paid then health professionals.

In Florida in 2009, a condo cost between $70,000 to $100,000. Who (besides millionaires) saves that much money in 3 years? We also have high unemployment and the cost of food, energy and just about everything else is going up, up, up. So are taxes.

What is missing is social and cultural infrastructure. Any visitor to Israel from a western country such as the US or Britain nowadays is shocked by how much physical construction is taking places. New massive highways are polluting our God-given landscape every year and costing billions of sheqels in the process, while our cultural and social development stagnates and we become ever more forgetful of our beautiful language, unique ancient culture, and tradition of cooperation with each other and our neighbours. This is the investment that is really needed.

Average house price in UK is curerntly about £225,000. Average wage is £25,000, but that caqn't all go towards buying the house: the worker has to live from it, and usually pay rent for current accommodation too. Since the banking crisis, banks are demanding a 30% deposit befoer they will grant a mortgage. Mortgages are usually spread over 25years, and most of the money the buyer pays back each month only covers the interest the bank is charging (My mortgage is only small at 50K, but two thirds of my monthly payment is interest, and that's with interest rates currently very low!) The timescale given in the report for 'saving up for' a UK house are therefore bunkum: the average person would struggle to save just the deposit in that time.

For goodness' sake if they can't afford cheese, why don't they just eat plain bread without cheese? I'm so tired of their moanings.

If the people cannot buy eggs, they should try to eat less - ration the number of eggs they use per week. It sounds once more like people are lazy, having time to write and read useless reports, and moan and whinge about everything.