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This wasn’t an ideological whim but a reaction to a national emergency. The public sector, and with it the Treasury, teetered on bankruptcy’s brink. The welfare state was widely perceived as an unaffordable burden. Indeed, among the most enthusiastic new class of emerging tycoons were many who boasted pronounced left-wing orientations.61:{"position":4,"content":"$62"} 63:{"position":5,"content":"Welfare advocacy was thereafter relegated mostly to the ultra-Orthodox or Arab sectors, each with in-built problems of its own. The near economic breakdown of 2002-2003 bit further into welfare allowances."} 64:{"position":6,"content":"Promoters of today’s welfare-state nostalgia aver that collecting more taxes from the rich will pay for government largesse to benefit broad segments of society, including the middle class."} 65:{"position":7,"content":"Analysts are quick to counter, however, that this is more in the realm of demagoguery than reality. Even draconian income-tax increases for the top-earners won’t cover the reductions in indirect taxes (in the value-added tax, for example) recommended by the protesters. How will the rest of their extravagant demands be financed? The neo-welfare lobby advises deficit spending, which it insists isn’t as unthinkable as the government makes out."} 66:{"position":8,"content":"This is where the European models appear. The higher tax burdens imposed in notable European welfare havens such as Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Italy and France are proposed as models that Israel ought to emulate. All the aforementioned states collect propor

The welfare state

Rather than aiming to bring down the government, the outcry is for changing the system.