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Getting beyond the teachers’ strike
Originally published 17 Oct 2007 in The Jerusalem Post

As long as education remains a government monopoly, it is bound to function like all other government monopolies, where union bosses fill the vacuum that lack of defined ownership creates, and monopoly power allows them to blackmail the public.

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How to grow Israeli hi-tech
Originally published 14 Aug 2007 in The Jerusalem Post

At the recent Merage Foundation conference to help Israel’s hi-tech sector grow, calls were heard for more government “direction”. This despite sixty years of massive government intervention and “development efforts” that have led mostly to massive failures and waste.

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A president of visions
Originally published 18 Jul 2007 in The Jerusalem Post

	Shimon Peres

President Shimon Peres, we all know, is a man of visions. Some have been better than others. The less successful ones, that translated into costly, failing and even dangerous policies, were those that denied reality.

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So Erel Margalit wants to be Jerusalem mayor
Originally published 22 Jun 2006 in The Jerusalem Post

	Houston (photo: Rice University)

Erel Margalit, one of Israel’s hi-tech leaders, may run for mayor of Jerusalem. He wants to follow Houston’s mayor, who “brought music to the city.” Maybe music helped, but more likely its success was predicated on its being a pro-business town.

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Is poverty here to stay?
Originally published 5 May 2005 in The Jerusalem Post

A pack of media mavens, notably Ruth Sinai of Haaretz, savaged Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, claiming his adoption of the Irish model would result – and indeed has already resulted, they claim – in increased, rather than diminished, poverty. Definitely so, if you subscribe to the statistical nonsense that misrepresents the number of the poor by making it dependent on relative rather than real values.

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