'Lapid will be recorded as a failed or successful minister regardless of his formal education'
Photo: Gil Yohanan
Leave Lapid's education out of it
Op-ed: Finance minister may be missing two years of high school, but his VAT-free housing plan is as good as any economist's plan.
The high-tech nation developed not far from my parents' home. This is something I learned recently. Yaki Faitelson, a childhood friend, held an initial public offering on NASDAQ of a data protection company valued at $500 million. A day later, his company (Varonis) doubled its value. The wonders of the Israeli economy, or perhaps the wonders of Israelis engaged in high-tech.
Yaki's story is a good lesson about education and its results. About the norm and the exception. Within the religious community we were stray sheep, with a temporary skullcap on our heads and problematic wool. The educational system did not get along with both of us. Yaki had good hands and good legs. He knew how to repair ATVs which had broken down, ride donkeys that arrived from the nearby village and run fast. I mostly knew how to run after him in the pre-army training. We both couldn't sit down. We were not religious enough to persist with the religious education, and not students enough to persist with educational issues in general.
Yaki and I grew up in Elkana. A classic settlement, Religious Zionism with a mustache. I'm mentioning this because I have recently heard many claims about wild weeds growing within the settlements. "Price tag" youth with unkempt side-locks and unkempt logic. The claims are partially true. There are harmful ones here and there, but we should also remind people that other things grow there as well.
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It's reasonable to assume that the community's veteran residents did not see a bright future for us. In every small village there are troublemakers, in every settlement there are those who one should keep away from. We were in this group. Twenty-five years later, Yaki grew up and somehow reached the world of computers, and I grew up and somehow reached the world of newspapers.
I have no idea how he did it. The only time we tried to discuss software issues, I got lost after a minute. The only thing I know is that life taught him to make decisions and make money off of them. Two months ago, when I visited New York, we sat down for lunch, discussed some history and shared memories over a bowl of Korean soup. For dessert, Yaki spoke about economics. He didn't study economics. Nor did he study computers in an organized manner, and yet his insights are not worth less (and in his occupation they are probably worth more) than others.
The Israeli economy depends on people, not on numbers. The people make decisions, the numbers only corroborate them. Like Yaki, Finance Minister Yair Lapid didn't study economics. As a matter of fact, he probably didn't study anything. Lapid is a product of the educational system. It failed with him, and he failed with it.
In spite of that, Lapid made a career on words, and eventually became finance minister. After a year in office, the arguments against him on the educational issue should be dropped. His new plan for a VAT exemption on new apartments is as good as educated economists' plans. It has a lot of potential to be beneficial, and it also has some potential for damage.
In the past two weeks, I have heard economists supporting and opposing. Each side has a convincing explanation and faith that the numbers are on his side. The Treasury workers are no different from other economists. They have an opinion and figures; they have no prophetic sense. A government worker's resignation says nothing about the correctness of his arguments. It doesn’t say that he was wrong either.
Apartment prices in Israel have been going up at an impossible rate in the past decade. Young people can't buy an apartment. There are all kinds of options to make it easier for them. The same options existed in the past. There are no free solutions, and no one is keen on spending money on new solutions.
The finance minister's job is to choose and implement. He can made a decision with the title of doctor in his business card, and he can make the right decision even if he is missing two years of high school. Lapid will be recorded as a failed or successful finance minister regardless of his formal education.
I am in favor of education, as long as it is not used as a condition for decision making.
