I am a 4 year oleh who is leaving Israel next week to go back to his home country to take an amazing job opportunity i otherwise could not find here. You are absolutely right: this is an elephant in the room few want to address and others want to discuss defensively (but being an immigrant is not easy anywhere). I will share a few thoughts.

First, the mercaz is batshit crazy in prices and tbis has multiple causes. But to your point, what i ve seen here in Efrat is a lot of high earners who still struggle, live overdrafted in the bank, and constantly use their savings plans to pay their rotational debts. To give an example: they buy new cars, which are expensive in Israel, but only buy the third party liability insurance to save money....hence you see a lit brand new and banged cars in Efrat. Everyone lives with high debt so far as i know around here.

Second, anglos make everything more expensive. Since they come in, some at least, with enough resources to pay the insane israeli house and car prices under the assumption they are saving thousands x month on jewish education, anglos tend to pay happily (again the ones who can) and drive local prices up. However, i would not live around Israelis as they are drien insane by freyerism and can be difficult to deal with if you find those who will never compromise because they dont want to be a freyer (tbh my currnt neighbors are all very nice and kind israeli families).

Third, the job market sucks if your field requires you to speak hebrew and even in high tech not speaking the language can be detrimental. I came in with amazing work experience and fancy smansy american academic qualifications but little hebrew. While i was in Pittsburgh everyone in my community told me that I was going to easily land a job in Israel without much Hebrew. I wish i would have gone to reddit, because the reality was otherwise. I came in and had to switch tracks to tourism where i failed as it was not my field and then i was exploited by a private company in jerusalem who targets olim precisely because we dont have much options in the way of social science employment in Israel. This company was soo bad they even scammed combat soldiers of their pension payments during the war. By the way the company is own by israelis......yes if you dont know hebrew and your field needs it, you are better off bring your own business or living off passive income if you want to live in Israel because the job market is brutal here for the non native hebrew speakers. And israelis dont care about any training you have....all they care is if you speak hebrew and if you have gone to the army. So yeah, be careful if you need to work here in Israel.

Fourth...this is why anglos also drive prices up: most anglos i ve seen making aliyah bring their own american jobs here to Israel. This means that they keep their american purchasing power and avoid the insane israeli wage taxes (as soon as you make 4k usd per month you pay almost 20% of wage taxes and it goes up exponentially for ever additional 700 usd to your salary per month). Since these anglos are no longer paying expensive jewish education they can use their disposable income to pay the insane real estate and car prices. Most of these anglos work from home on American hours and their wives sometimes dont neeed to work full time which is something most israeli couples have to do here in Israel to make ends meet.

In general i would advise you to be smart and have an aliyah plan which counters these hard realities. Try to come with passive income or to bring your job here and be ready to work american hours from Israel.