Income tax actually, although over here is there is less difference than you would think.

Actually what happened was that many bankers deferred their bonus payments then took them after the rate was abolished. This means the stats are pretty worthless. If it had stayed on the books for a few more years it might have worked, but since people were allowed to just defer paying tax at the higher rate until after it was abolished we will never really know.

What utter crap.

Part of the reason those jobs disappeared because people filling their cars up started being driven to buy the cheapest gas they could, that often meant going to gas stations where you served yourself. The end of the gas station attendant probably had more to do with the price of oil going up sharply in the 80's than minimum wage. People were forced to economise, but when the prices started going down again by then they were used to filling their cars up themselves so few businesses bothered moving back to the old system.

The other huge factor now is trust, and this is probably more important than minimum wage and the reason above. Back in the late 70s the only indicator of how much fuel you bought was on the pump. That nice fella who wiped your wind shield was actually doing it because you the business could not do without him, they needed him to use the pump so they knew how much fuel you used and how much to charge you. Once technology enabled the till in the store to be connected to the pump and CCTV to monitor the whole place and record the licence plate of anyone who drove off without paying the businesses realised that customers could be trusted to serve themselves.

This is just another example of technology doing someone out of a job .

The assumes that business hires people it does not really need, they don't. Any sensible business hire the minimum number of people they need at any one time, there is a little bit of slack as businesses hold on to people they might not need now but might need in a month or two but that is usually a symptom of the cost to train someone up again if you let them go.

In light of this, all that happens when you raise minimum wage is that employers pay more and then have to raise their prices a little to cover it. If a business lets someone go as a result of the minimum wage increasing then that business must be able to do with out them anyway, or they are right on the edge of bankruptcy and are letting someone go who they cannot do without, but in my experience businesses like that are doomed anyway since they are clearly not profitable anyway.

None of this is to say that large increases in the minimum wage would be a good idea, but a slight increase to cover inflation is not going to do anywhere near as much harm as the media make out. Of course very few news outlets in the US put this view across though because they are generally owned by people who are very rich and will have to pay their cleaners and nannies more if the minimum wage goes up.

Even when people are supposedly more mobile, moving is a big thing for most people so they do not do it.

Here in the UK we had a 50% tax rate imposed on the very richest a few years ago. There were lots of stories about how this was going to drive away people who were successful abroad but in the end it made very little difference because while these sort of exceeding rich people might threaten to take their family somewhere else, but then when they talk to their wife and she refuses to move more than a 20 minute drive from her family and refuses to move the kids out of school and away from their friends.

A few years ago I wanted to move to the states as there were few companies that I could have worked for that might have appreciated a few niche skills I had picked up in their field. Although I would have been a ton financially better off in the states and we could have bought a much bigger house to start a family in than the 3 bedroom London house we have now, my wife would not have moved that far away from the family support. I could have explained how the US tax code would have benefited us until I was blue in the face but she simple wouldn't have cared enough to pay attention.

The idea that people will move is just a scare story that the rich use to try and maintain the ability to pay less in taxes or employers use to justify being able to pay as little in wages as possible.

I personally think that if Israel stopped tearing down Palestinian homes and agreed to the immediate formation of a Palestinian state with borders that were where they are now then peace could be attainable. The huge problem though is that many Zionist Jews would find that utterly unacceptable as it as such a departure from the promised land as it was given to the Jews by god.

I don't think Israel needs to tear down a single settlement, just promise not to build any more and then actually live up to that promise for a year or two.

Even during the last ceasefire the blockade was still in effect so it is not as simple as you suggest.

How about screw companies that want to do business in a local area without following local laws?

Does your same logic apply to columbians who want to sell crack in the US? That is just the good all free market too isn't it?

Yup, that is the point. You do not have to actually HIT the incomming nuke, as the effects of nuclear weapons in the upper atmosphere cover such a huge area. Like I said in my post, the outcome you describe is a far better one for the US that a nuke landing on Washington or New York.

Hamas probably try and bolster their numbers by counting all adults as being serving members :)

Their not allowed to repair the buildings as concrete is on the list of goods that Israel prevents from being imported:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

You seem to ignore that Israel is STILL doing this now though. The IDF tears down hundreds of Palestinian homes each year in the name of punishing those involved in terrorism, and the dept of agriculture builds more and more Israeli settlements. You might do it more slowly now, but the end result is still that Israel is expanding and taking more and more land.

Do you actually want Israel to be the size of this map?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

The problem is that other people live there now and they have a right to carry on living there.

The Palestinians who have their houses pulled down each year to make way for more Jewish settlements probably said that too. That is the real problem, until Israel stops expanding on land that is being stolen from others around it this conflict will carry on.

No, 20 were children. The number of civilians is more like 53 according to this article: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/israe...

Star wars to me actually made sense (although maybe not in the way it was pitched to the public).You could use a small nuclear device to screw up a much larger nuclear device while both were at very high altitude. Ok, you are going to cause a shit load of nuclear fallout to come down but hopefully that will be somewhere else like over the atlantic, pacific or mainland Europe. Either way, better a bit of fallout than an actual missile targeted at Washington or New York.

The things about Iron Dome though, is that the rockets they are trying to hit are basically crap. The rockets might have a decent range but they have no way of targeting them so they generally do sod all apart from scare people. Hamas have been launching them for days with no real effect in the latest conflict but even if you go back years they have very rarely killed or even hit anyone. Israel on the other hand kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians every year with their very advanced military hardware, often provided by the US for free.

Don't get me wrong, I think the launching of rockets randomly against the civilian population of Israel is utterly wrong, but the reality seems to be that both sides are quite happy to kill civilians on the other side its just that Israel is much better at it.

Maybe, the people of Gaza should all just up and leave so that Israel can have its promised land. It's not like then being there is stopping Israel building new settlements anyway and with the US always backing Israel there is no chance of that changing.