More about Israel's public sector.

According to TheMarker – the economic supplement to Ha'aretz, of course – there is such a thing as the Department for Public Complaints Against Judges in the Ministry of Justice. (I don't know if that's the official name – I only read about this in a Russian translation of the Hebrew article. If I find out better, I'll correct it). So anyhow, the director of this department gets paid 61,000 NIS per month before benefits. When the benefits are factored in, her salary rolls in to 78,000 NIS per month, or 935,000 NIS per year. That's $252,700 per year – more than the salary of the speaker of the US Senate.

Naturally, my readers will point out, this is only an exception, and most of the employees of the state don't get paid as much. That is true. The Chief Administrator of the Ministry of Defense (separate, I note, from the Minister, or from the Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry), whose job is undefined – apparently, TheMarker has not the slightest clue what the man actually does for a living. He gets paid 60.7 thousand shekels per month. The various Deputy Chief Executive Officers of the Ministry of Defense (no, there is not just one Deputy CEO of the Ministry of Defense, that would be a naïve assumption) get 58,000 NIS. Crane operators in the state-owned ports get up to five times what a regular crane operator gets – 52,000 NIS per month.

Naturally, the same thing that happens every year will repeat itself. The country will whine for a month about the salaries of these losers and forget about it. People who suggest cutting even one bureaucrat from his desk will be derided as anti-hevrati (anti-social) and possibly even anti-mamlachti (anti-statist).

And yet people insist on whining Israel has too much capitalism. Surely, the stupid of some people is a marvel to behold.