At the opening of the annual Herzliya Conference on Tuesday, participants will likely debate journalist and former Channel 2 anchor Yair Lapid's entry into politics. They will most likely discuss the new hope he represents for many people (if recent surveys reflect reality for a change) and perhaps the new slogan he coined: "Where's the money-" Where are the billions upon billions, more than half of what we earn through hard labor, that politicians have squeezed from us, Lapid asks justifiably. It has taken more than 60 years, but we have finally internalized the fact that what we get from politicians is not worth even a small part of the exaggerated amount they and their governments have squeezed out of us (while oligarchs and tycoons get the rest from us through other commodities). Politicians are not good parents or social workers. Their governments resemble a political octopus greedy for ever-increasing budgets, jobs, and billions from our pockets, some of which is recycled as "grants" so they can be re-elected. Governments -- especially socialist-leaning governments -- established a political system that distorts our division of resources. In a land in which foreign investments have topped $300 billion, and with the greatest human resources on earth, the entire nation should have been living in a wealthy and exemplary society. But we have become an economic and social cripple, plagued with conflicts whose sides are incited to battle each other over the crumbs of a cake that was not baked properly. The government is preventing the economy from growing. It has bankrupted people and has not met their ever-increasing economic needs. Politics is the battle zone of the resource-sharing system known as the welfare state. Will it take another 60 years for us to understand that a bloated government is the root of all our problems, and not the solution to them? Will it take another half-century to understand that we will not receive better education by expanding the failed government-education monopoly to cover children between the ages of 3 to 6? We will end up wasting more billions only to harm our toddlers -- harm that the government-education monopoly is already inflicting on children ages 6 to 18. Is this the equality and the "social justice" that "the people" demanded? Like any government office, the education system will not toe the line when it is chained down by a bureaucracy (and by nature there is no government without a bureaucracy) that stifles growth and innovation, whether the education minister is Yossi Sarid or Gideon Sa'ar. Only a limited government can fulfill its legitimate functions of security and law enforcement. Too many ministerial posts, many of which are redundant, will cause a government to fail. And we shouldn't be concerned that a smaller government will lead to an increase in unemployment. Narrowing the government will enable it to release the private sector, leading, in turn, to a growth in employment and a system that will absorb the unemployed or compensate them. Is there still hope that we will one day learn not to be tempted by academics and professors of "humanities," wise guys and neo-Marxists, ignoramuses of economics and practical living? Will we one day reject the irrelevant presentations of those known as social-democrats, such as Shelly Yachimovich and Daphni Leef, who would happily impose on us a system of governmental bureaucracy that in their view would "serve the people well"- Is there any hope that in the next elections, unlike in the past, politicians will not be beholden to tycoons, who with the help of public relations firms are contriving once again to bring a disaster upon us-
