According to a worldwide survey, there are 8,419 persons with one million dollars worth of investments in Israel. In Hong Kong, there are 209,000. They did it, so it can be done.
13 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Hong Kong is not, as it first appears, just a little isolated island but rather is the gateway to a vast Chinese manufacturing empire, which is the true source of its wealth. Israel could be the gateway to the Arab world - the Arabs of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, etc. are vastly unemployed and underemployed due to their shitty governments and rotten culture and are a potential untapped manufacturing workforce. But I wouldn't hold my breath - Whatever make the Arabs rotten and worthless shows no signs of going away and in many ways is getting worse - Damascus, Cairo and Baghdad were once upon a time semi-civilized, semi-Westernized place that seemed on the verge of modernity (and before that they were cultural capitals of the Arab world, more advance than contemporary European cities). Now they are further than ever away from being in the mainstream of Western civilization. The chances that they will take lessons in modernity from the Jews are nil.
Hong Kong and Singapur are the richest city-states in the world. The British founded them as trade entrepots and trained the natives how to govern themselves. The Zionist idea for Israel is to be a "normal" country like Russia or Poland, with agriculture, industry, working class, intelligentsia, etc.
Right now you have a large intelligensia, a large warrior class, and, from what I could make out, a large leisure class. But no working class,so you will have to import your working class.
And already they are volunteering, walking across the Sinai, from Africa.
I don't think that having a Sudanese working class is quite what Herzl had in mind. OTOH, and I've said this before, "working class" is something that the intelligentsia wants the children of OTHER people to be, not their own.
Maybe I misunderstood you J - I thought it was your ambition for Israel to have as many millionaires as HK. No "normal" country of 7 million has 200,000 millionaires. But a trading entrepot that stands as the gateway to a continent might (and does). So Israel could do something like that (maybe in the new cyber world the "continent" is intellectual and not physical) , or it could be a "normal" country, but not both.
Jews will never be a "normal" people despite what Herzl wanted - a normal people does not have a mean IQ of 115 or so. Now I realize that in Israel there are only maybe a couple million of true Ashkenazim with this kind of IQ but still this is enough not to make Israel a "normal" country, even putting aside the fact that you are surrounded by several hundred million hostile Muslims. Even if Israel was on a peaceful island in the middle of the Pacific, it would not be a "normal" country in the way that Herzl imagined it in his fantasies. These were fantasies to begin with (not the idea of a Jewish state itself but the idea that it would be "normal" in the sense that the Jews would then become like the Poles)and 100 years later where conditions have changed vastly from the time he wrote it is even dumber to use his social ideas as a model for what the state should aspire to.
Why? It would be nice to have 200,000 millionaires in Israel. But of course, the idea was to build a broad based society, with a large farmer-worker basis. It was an utopia in an era that social engineering was in fashion.
BTW, obviously you never studied Gemara in a yeshive. It is no leisure and it is no fun at all. The logic is convoluted and dry. The issues are unfamiliar, like temple sacrifices. And you have to follow the arguments of different thinkers that dispute along the centuries and the Diaspora. In Aramaic. A few years of Gemara and the stock exchange is children's play.
As I said before, you can have 200,000 millionaires or you can have a broad base of workers and farmers but you can't have both in a country of 7M.
I realize that studying in a yeshiva is not "fun" in the sense that going to the movies is fun, but it is more "fun" than digging ditches. And for a people with a mean IQ of 115, it is probably more "fun" than it would be for most peoples.
What yeshiva is really good preparation for is law school. When I was at law school in NY, there were a couple of guys who had been to yeshiva (generally the career tracks don't overlap much but in a city as big as NY there were bound to be a few exceptions). I was under the impression that law school was a piece of cake for them - all the things that you describe were there in law school - unfamiliar issues, convoluted logic, the need to follow a line of thinkers over many centuries. The only difference was that everything was in English. The yeshiva bochers had been doing all this since they were little children so more of the same was no great challenge.
For the rest of us, legal analysis was a completely new way of thinking and the entire 1st year of law school is pretty much taken up trying to get comfortable with that new (to you) mode of thinking and logic. And it was, as you say, hard work to be mentally challenged like this every day. But I grew up on an egg farm where we literally had to shovel shit, so I know the difference between REAL hard work and the intellectual kind and vastly prefer the latter.
I realize that and further not all the "Ashkenazim" in Israel are really Ashkenazim. A lot of the Russians who came over at the end of the Soviet Union were either mischlings or in some cases not Jewish at all. Also in the early days of Israel when it was beneficial to be Ashkenazi, probably a number of Sephardim "crossed the color line". Israel sure could have used those missing 6 million brilliant Ashkenazim instead of hunting now for handfuls of imaginary "Jews" in Africa. Oh, the saddest words - what might have been.
In 1939 there were about 18 million Jews in the world and today it would have been about 36 million (supposing they would grow at least like the Poles). Israel would be a world power. But I dont if know how would Europe tolerate such a large minority. Antisemitism would be intolerable.
Maybe Israel could to abolish the income tax or cap it in some way to attract wealthy immigrants. There is no shortage of Jews with money and America and Europe may be raising taxes to pay for the retirement of the baby boomers. It is hard to imagine Israel prospering with a half-Arab population though: they are just not smart enough.
Much of that wealth in HK, is tied up in property. Don't build anything in Tel Aviv for the next ten years, you'll get a few hundred thousand millionaires too.
13 comments:
Hong Kong is not, as it first appears, just a little isolated island but rather is the gateway to a vast Chinese manufacturing empire, which is the true source of its wealth. Israel could be the gateway to the Arab world - the Arabs of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, etc. are vastly unemployed and underemployed due to their shitty governments and rotten culture and are a potential untapped manufacturing workforce. But I wouldn't hold my breath - Whatever make the Arabs rotten and worthless shows no signs of going away and in many ways is getting worse - Damascus, Cairo and Baghdad were once upon a time semi-civilized, semi-Westernized place that seemed on the verge of modernity (and before that they were cultural capitals of the Arab world, more advance than contemporary European cities). Now they are further than ever away from being in the mainstream of Western civilization. The chances that they will take lessons in modernity from the Jews are nil.
K
K
Hong Kong and Singapur are the richest city-states in the world. The British founded them as trade entrepots and trained the natives how to govern themselves. The Zionist idea for Israel is to be a "normal" country like Russia or Poland, with agriculture, industry, working class, intelligentsia, etc.
Right now you have a large intelligensia, a large warrior class, and, from what I could make out, a large leisure class. But no working class,so you will have to import your working class.
And already they are volunteering, walking across the Sinai, from Africa.
All you have to do is let them in.
Good luck.
Anon.
I don't think that having a Sudanese working class is quite what Herzl had in mind. OTOH, and I've said this before, "working class" is something that the intelligentsia wants the children of OTHER people to be, not their own.
Maybe I misunderstood you J - I thought it was your ambition for Israel to have as many millionaires as HK. No "normal" country of 7 million has 200,000 millionaires. But a trading entrepot that stands as the gateway to a continent might (and does). So Israel could do something like that (maybe in the new cyber world the "continent" is intellectual and not physical) , or it could be a "normal" country, but not both.
Jews will never be a "normal" people despite what Herzl wanted - a normal people does not have a mean IQ of 115 or so. Now I realize that in Israel there are only maybe a couple million of true Ashkenazim with this kind of IQ but still this is enough not to make Israel a "normal" country, even putting aside the fact that you are surrounded by several hundred million hostile Muslims. Even if Israel was on a peaceful island in the middle of the Pacific, it would not be a "normal" country in the way that Herzl imagined it in his fantasies. These were fantasies to begin with (not the idea of a Jewish state itself but the idea that it would be "normal" in the sense that the Jews would then become like the Poles)and 100 years later where conditions have changed vastly from the time he wrote it is even dumber to use his social ideas as a model for what the state should aspire to.
K
Why? It would be nice to have 200,000 millionaires in Israel. But of course, the idea was to build a broad based society, with a large farmer-worker basis. It was an utopia in an era that social engineering was in fashion.
BTW, obviously you never studied Gemara in a yeshive. It is no leisure and it is no fun at all. The logic is convoluted and dry. The issues are unfamiliar, like temple sacrifices. And you have to follow the arguments of different thinkers that dispute along the centuries and the Diaspora. In Aramaic. A few years of Gemara and the stock exchange is children's play.
As I said before, you can have 200,000 millionaires or you can have a broad base of workers and farmers but you can't have both in a country of 7M.
I realize that studying in a yeshiva is not "fun" in the sense that going to the movies is fun, but it is more "fun" than digging ditches. And for a people with a mean IQ of 115, it is probably more "fun" than it would be for most peoples.
What yeshiva is really good preparation for is law school. When I was at law school in NY, there were a couple of guys who had been to yeshiva (generally the career tracks don't overlap much but in a city as big as NY there were bound to be a few exceptions). I was under the impression that law school was a piece of cake for them - all the things that you describe were there in law school - unfamiliar issues, convoluted logic, the need to follow a line of thinkers over many centuries. The only difference was that everything was in English. The yeshiva bochers had been doing all this since they were little children so more of the same was no great challenge.
For the rest of us, legal analysis was a completely new way of thinking and the entire 1st year of law school is pretty much taken up trying to get comfortable with that new (to you) mode of thinking and logic. And it was, as you say, hard work to be mentally challenged like this every day. But I grew up on an egg farm where we literally had to shovel shit, so I know the difference between REAL hard work and the intellectual kind and vastly prefer the latter.
K
By the way, you won't have to worry about the 115 IQ for much longer, with all the help on the way from the Sudan.
It's already down below that anyway.
Only the Euro-Ashkenazim are at 115.
Anon.
I realize that and further not all the "Ashkenazim" in Israel are really Ashkenazim. A lot of the Russians who came over at the end of the Soviet Union were either mischlings or in some cases not Jewish at all. Also in the early days of Israel when it was beneficial to be Ashkenazi, probably a number of Sephardim "crossed the color line". Israel sure could have used those missing 6 million brilliant Ashkenazim instead of hunting now for handfuls of imaginary "Jews" in Africa. Oh, the saddest words - what might have been.
K
It is very difficult now for high IQ people to expand their own population. All the forces of the modern world are against it.
But, if you are really so clever, you will find a solution to this also.
Anon.
What might have been...
In 1939 there were about 18 million Jews in the world and today it would have been about 36 million (supposing they would grow at least like the Poles). Israel would be a world power. But I dont if know how would Europe tolerate such a large minority. Antisemitism would be intolerable.
As usual, you are perceptive.
But how then, are they tolerating the Muslim invasion of Europe today?
Anon.
Maybe Israel could to abolish the income tax or cap it in some way to attract wealthy immigrants. There is no shortage of Jews with money and America and Europe may be raising taxes to pay for the retirement of the baby boomers. It is hard to imagine Israel prospering with a half-Arab population though: they are just not smart enough.
Much of that wealth in HK, is tied up in property. Don't build anything in Tel Aviv for the next ten years, you'll get a few hundred thousand millionaires too.
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