Excerpt from a New York Times David Brooks Op-ed article on Tel Aviv and the Israeli economy, currently among the world's strongest. Maybe we could learn some lessons. Interesting comment below about failure of oil nation $$$ to create such economy and that CULTURE is more important. I read this as "EDUCATION TRUMPS INCENTIVES and LOW TAXES" when it comes to economic advancement.QuoteOp-Ed Columnist
The Tel Aviv Cluster
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: January 11, 2010
....Tel Aviv has become one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurial hot spots. Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth, by far. It leads the world in civilian research-and-development spending per capita. It ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq. Israel, with seven million people, attracts as much venture capital as France and Germany combined.
As Dan Senor and Saul Singer write in “Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle,†Israel now has a classic innovation cluster, a place where tech obsessives work in close proximity and feed off each other’s ideas.
Because of the strength of the economy, Israel has weathered the global recession reasonably well. The government did not have to bail out its banks or set off an explosion in short-term spending. Instead, it used the crisis to solidify the economy’s long-term future by investing in research and development and infrastructure, raising some consumption taxes, promising to cut other taxes in the medium to long term. Analysts at Barclays write that Israel is “the strongest recovery story†in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Israel’s technological success is the fruition of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world.
This shift in the Israeli identity has long-term implications. Netanyahu preaches the optimistic view: that Israel will become the Hong Kong of the Middle East, with economic benefits spilling over into the Arab world. And, in fact, there are strands of evidence to support that view in places like the West Bank and Jordan.
But it’s more likely that Israel’s economic leap forward will widen the gap between it and its neighbors. All the countries in the region talk about encouraging innovation. Some oil-rich states spend billions trying to build science centers. But places like Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv are created by a confluence of cultural forces, not money. The surrounding nations do not have the tradition of free intellectual exchange and technical creativity.
For example, between 1980 and 2000, Egyptians registered 77 patents in the U.S. Saudis registered 171. Israelis registered 7,652....
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/opinion/12brooks.html
actually Israel's economy has been hurting for at least 5 years...the increased security costs have hurt...and tourism is way down.
that said, they've done an incredible job in just 60 years!
Umm,Israel has a good sugar daddy..USA.
USA finances Israel in many fields,so its not that difficult to be "successful" with only 7 million people.
If I had someone giving me millions of dollars, I would be successful too.
And not to mention INTELLIGENCE.
Both American and Israeli spies are all over world,its not uncommon to steal information from others or know what they are up to which gives you HUGE advantage.
That's like bragging how rich celebrity kid is succeeding in Hollywood.
Quote from: Bostech on January 21, 2010, 04:55:10 AM
Umm,Israel has a good sugar daddy..USA.
USA finances Israel in many fields,so its not that difficult to be "successful" with only 7 million people.
If I had someone giving me millions of dollars, I would be successful too.
And not to mention INTELLIGENCE.
Both American and Israeli spies are all over world,its not uncommon to steal information from others or know what they are up to which gives you HUGE advantage.
That's like bragging how rich celebrity kid is succeeding in Hollywood.
Those darn Jews
Israelis not Jews.
Are you saying this is not true?
Israel has had the tremendous advantage over the past twenty years of having highly educated, ambitious people from Russia and other Eastern European countries emigrate there. They have become the professors, engineers and technical innovators that have driven the technological advances that are reflected in the number of patents and the number of new companies that have been founded.