Q&A: The State Budget
The State Budget
Question
Some claim that the Haredim are being shortchanged on this issue, since they pay taxes like everyone else (maybe a bit less), but less money is spent on them, since they have nothing to do with sports, theater, television, etc. And in society they are seen as if they are robbing the state. Is there any justice to what they are saying?
Answer
I haven’t checked the books, and it’s very hard to check this, so these claims are usually just demagoguery. It’s impossible to examine all aspects of the budget this way (including discounts and day-care subsidies for kollel students, for example). If you ask me, my unlearned estimate is that much more is invested in them.
Discussion on Answer
If that’s the case, isn’t it a major desecration of God’s name?
Being Haredi is a major desecration of God’s name. The budgets are only part of it.
One has to remember that most of the state budget goes to the large ministries such as defense, health, education, transportation, welfare, and foreign affairs — Petah Tikva Resident..
In fact, even from the education budget the Haredim receive much less, but that’s their own fault.
Rabbi, could you elaborate more on why being Haredi is a major desecration of God’s name?
Isn’t it obvious?
Holding irrational positions and superstitions, not allowing exposure to information, oppression and exclusion of women and separation by ethnic background, being run systematically by corrupt political fixers, lack of vocational training and bans on general education, persecution of anyone who is different and the phenomenon of people being coerced to outwardly conform, lack of transparency and failure to address internal social pathologies, not taking part in the security and economic burden but demanding more and more rights, discounts, and support, forcing roles, policy, and laws on the public that it does not want (alongside disgraceful secular passivity, which of course bears contributory blame), and all the while slandering and denigrating those who sustain you (the state — "the medina," Zionism, secular people, the army). And this really is only the tip of the iceberg. Is there a greater desecration of God’s name than that?! If there is, let it appear at once.
A few years ago I saw a report that broke down state revenues by income deciles. I don’t remember the numbers exactly, but roughly 80% of the state budget comes from the top three deciles, and another roughly 15% comes from the middle class, while the crumbs that remain come from the lower class. According to the assumption that most Haredim are in the lower class, apparently they receive more than they contribute. One has to remember that most of the state budget goes to the large ministries such as defense, health, education, transportation, welfare, and foreign affairs, so the Haredim benefit from most of the budget, and it’s ridiculous to complain about sports and culture, whose budgets are tiny compared to the other ministries.
In any case, my view is that every citizen of the state should receive all services regardless of how much he contributes to the state.