kd80

You're right, the salaries here are much lower, but then again so are the costs of living. I was having a discussion with an Israeli friend of mine and he said that he pays 27 shekel a month for health insurance, in the states I have to pay almost 120 dollars a month.

As for buying a car yeah it is easier. But in a lot of the places in the States, like Los Angeles where I'm from, you need a car to do anything. In addition Israel actually has a high percentage of home ownership. Its just that in Israel people own apartments vs houses in the states. But all those houses mean that many communities in the states suffer from suburban sprawl, which isn't a good thing.

There are differences and they shouldn't be understated, but the bottom line is that some Israeli's think the U.S. is absolutely perfect and that there are no problems there. This simply isn't the case, and people should know it.

Livni

A. can someone explain how some of the top ranking scandinavian countries lost 10-20,000$ of GDP in 6 years such as iceland norway denmark?? what happened is it because of euro value stuff?

B. Remember where this country started - economy of agriculture, zero oil, food rations, wars, large immigrant population, very few natural resources, very little land with 60% deserts and areas of swamps.
we made great jumps, and also in the last decade, some countries our size like ireland made a much bigger jump. If you remember we dont have the ability for huge trade with land-neighboring countries like european countries have between them, and also the fact we went between 2000 and 20006 through an intifada, through a recession of the global economy up to 2003, and also through the war last year, it makes it really amazing, but still we have the biggest gap in the world between poor societies, and rich society. some of the poor are "want to stay poor" and dont send women to work or even the men dont work or work in unskilled jobs, and have large families. we have the lowest work-rate percentage in the western world, which means if we can get a bigger percent of those societies to join the workforce we can continue to jump in gdp and also make the gaps less wide.

C. we dont think Europe or America are perfect but we like most countries today, strive to make our living conditions as close as possible. and I can say in many areas sometimes even better (healthcare, education, life expectancy). The sprawl is going to have a major effect on america if they dont find alternative fuels to the petrol and to warm themselves without so much natural gas reliance.

kd80

They didn't lose any value. Both of those columns show figures for 2006. One is the actual exchange rate in US dollars the other represents PPP or purchasing power parity.

What that basically means is that all those extra dollars in the european and Scandinavian countries get you less stuff cause things are more expensive there.

Livni

sorry my mistake, youre right

maayan

מאמר מעניין

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3443481,00.html