The Israeli Gilded Age

Above: Friend of plutocrats

Paul Krugman contextualizes Netanyahu’s troubles by pointing to what he calls “Israel’s Gilded Age,” as the free market devotee has pushed policies that has led to the same sorts of massive income inequality and concentration of extreme wealth among a very few people that such policies have created in the United States. Given that Israel has a somewhat more class oriented politics than the U.S. (at least in my reading of it), it’s not surprising that a lot of voters are willing to put their unease about their place in the Middle East aside and vote against Netanyahu.