From a Hudson Institute event in New York City last week at which Benjamin Netanyahu was honored with the Hudson Institute's Herman Kahn award:
[Interviewer]: Isn't it possible to do more and grow faster? And what are those things that the Netanyahu government has to do to get it done?
NETANYAHU: Well, the first thing is deregulation.
...regulation is required, but over-regulation is not, we definitely have over-regulation. I chair a few government committees, I mean I actually chair them, and every few weeks I bring in with my director general all of the relevant ministries and we cut. We take a machete and we cut. I'm looking for the silver machete; there are a few, you'll be hearing about them.
But that's goal number one because the greatest impediment right now to entrepreneurship, which is the key to economic growth, is holding back the power of bureaucrats and regulators, holding them back and yet keeping what you need. And that's a delicate balancing act. But it's not very delicate because we just over-regulate. So everything that you see about the Israeli economy is with this over-regulation, which tells you what the potential is.
I mean, over-regulation is like a heavy boot on the coiled spring of an economy. And if you remove it, it grows, you get growth just from deregulating. So Israel is very fortunate to have over-regulation because that's a growth opportunity. And if we grew at 5 percent, now we're growing at about 3 percent, 3 ½ percent, we're about to kick in another 1 1 /2 percent.
Full transcript here, full video embedded below.
