Aliya is not a career move
David Bernstein is right: Aliya (immigration to Israel) is not a career move. We can go back an forth on how to measure standard of living all day, but here’s a rather simple metric, which is hardly surprising given the GDP numbers: I know many Israelis who’ve emigrated to the U.S., and a smaller number of Americans who’ve moved to Israel. If you ask members of the former group why they’ve moved here, they will almost always respond that “a higher standard of living” or something similar was at least a significant factor, as, often is getting away from mandatory military and reserve service, a not insignificant drag on quality of life. The Americans who’ve moved to Israel, by contrast, almost never cite standard of living as a factor, but rather as a sacrifice they decided to make to pursue their dream of living in Israel. This is true even of Modern Orthodox families with three or four kids who get free religious public school education for those kids in Israel, as opposed to paying three or four day school tuitions in the U.S.When I made aliya in 1991, I went from being a 7th year associate at a prestigious Manhattan law firm to being an apprentice at a boutique Tel Aviv securities practice whose name partner took most of the money home for himself. I took a 91% paycut. Yes, you read correctly.
Today, Nefesh b'Nefesh ameliorates that kind of paycut by helping you out financially in the first year or two, but that doesn't change the fact that the standard of living here is much lower than it is in the States. Much lower. Bernstein was answering someone (Leftist Glenn Greenwald) who thinks otherwise. Maybe Greenwald should come live here for a while and see for himself.
Labels: aliya, David Bernstein, GDP, Glenn Greenwald, Nefesh b'Nefesh
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:16 PM
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