Sounds interesting. I'm studying economics and my roommate is studying biology and has work experience in biofuels. Would you be able to send me your model/spreadsheet? If so my email is em_green at berkeley dot e d u. Thanks!

Of course its not, but ensuring that tax rates are Pareto Efficient sure is a legitimate goal of government.

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

Not if the people are too afraid about losing their job to spend their tax cuts on a new car, computer, etc. which is how it is currently looking. Also, tax cuts will never be 100% efficient because not all of the cuts will be spent in a useful time frame. They take a couple of months to propagate their way through the govt bureaucracy and into peoples' bank accounts.

Interestingly enough, with reference to that 5% of GDP military spending is the fact the the US military spending is only 4% of GDP. Although this doesn't count the whole Iraq war debacle, the point is that while we do spend a large amount of money on military, our economy is so damn big that proportionally we're fine.

Regardless of whether or not Hamas and other Arab states mean the "no live jew" rhetoric, I think in light of the Holocaust Israel feels as if they have to take such rhetoric seriously. I mean, after what happened in WW2, its easy to see why they might be a tad on edge when someone raises the specter of extermination.