Editing Benjamin Netanyahu (section)

=== Economic views ===
{{Quote box|width=290px|align=right|quote=You want to have a [[meritocracy]]. You want to have initiative, risk, talent, the ability to create new products, new services to be rewarded&nbsp;... It's always been about competition. That's what human progress is about. You want to siphon it into productive ways.|source=Benjamin Netanyahu, ''The Marker'', 2014<ref name="haaretz.com">{{cite news|url=http://www.haaretz.com/business/.premium-1.585126|title=Netanyahu: Corporate media is responsible for Israeli crony capitalism|first=Guy|last=Rolnik|work=Haaretz|date=11 April 2014}}</ref>}}
By 1998, Netanyahu had acquired a reputation as "the advocate of the free-market" and in 1999 told the ''Jerusalem Post'': "Peace is an end of itself [...] peace, without free markets, will not produce growth. But free markets without peace do produce growth."<ref>{{cite book|last=Hofmann|first=Sabine|date=12 April 2016|orig-year=2012|chapter=Regional Cooperation Under Conflict: Israeli–Arab Business Cooperation in the Middle East |title=Beyond Regionalism?: Regional Cooperation, Regionalism and Regionalization in the Middle East|edition=1st ed. ebook|editor1-first=Cilja|editor1-last=Harders|editor2-first=Matteo|editor2-last=Legrenzi|publisher=Ashgate Publishing Company|location=Burlington, Vermont|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=g1oWULcHdZAC&pg=PA191#v=onepage&q&f=false 191]|isbn=978-1-315-56925-3|doi=10.4324/9781315569253|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g1oWULcHdZAC|via=[[Google Books]]|postscript=none}}, quoting {{cite journal |last1=Barak |first1=Jeff |last2=Harman|first2=Danna|date=11 May 1999|title='The only peace that will hold is a peace we can defend'|journal=[[The Jerusalem Post]]|volume=LXVII|number=20228|page=A8–A9, A14 |id={{ProQuest|1440970870}}|ref=noharv}}</ref> As prime minister in his first term, he significantly reformed the banking sector, removing barriers to investment abroad, mandatory purchases of government securities and direct credit. As Minister of Finance (2003–2005), Netanyahu introduced a major overhaul of the Israeli economy. He introduced a welfare to work program, he led a program of privatization, reduced the size of the public sector, reformed and streamlined the taxation system and passed laws against monopolies and cartels with the aim of increasing competition.<ref name="Likud Leaders 2015"/> Netanyahu extended capital gains taxes from companies to individuals, which allowed him to enlarge the tax base while reducing taxes on incomes.<ref>''Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon'', By David Landau (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2014), Chapter 14</ref> As the Israeli economy started booming and unemployment fell significantly, Netanyahu was widely credited by commentators as having performed an 'economic miracle' by the end of his tenure.<ref name="Likud Leaders 2015"/> Direct investment in the Israeli economy had increased by an annualized 380%.<ref>[http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-1000016013 Foreign investment in Israel at record levels] Globes, 26 September 2005,  Zeev Klein</ref> On the other hand, his critics have labelled his economic views as [[Margaret Thatcher]]-inspired "popular capitalism".<ref>''The Political Right in Israel: Different Faces of Jewish Populism'', by Dani Filc (Routledge, 2009), p. 65</ref>

Netanyahu defines capitalism as "the ability to have individual initiative and competition to produce goods and services with profit, but not to shut out somebody else from trying to do the same".<ref name="haaretz.com"/> He says that his views developed while he was working as an economic consult for [[Boston Consulting Group]]: "It was the first time that the Boston Consulting Group looked at governments and worked for governments. They wanted to do a strategic plan for the government of Sweden. I was on that case and looked at other governments. So I went around to other governments in Europe in 1976 and I was looking at Britain. I was looking at France. I was looking at other countries, and I could see that they were stymied by concentrations of power that prevented competition. And I thought, hmm, as bad as they are, ours was worse because we had very little room for private sector competition to the extent that we had government-controlled or union-controlled companies, and so you really didn't get the competition or the growth&nbsp;... And I said, well, if I ever have a chance, I'll change that."<ref name="haaretz.com"/>