I don't follow. The salaries of state employees are paid from the same pool of money as the fellowship of doctoral students. The employee works (=produces knowledge/items) in her office, Noam works in his lab, I work in the library. Our financial existence is funded by the state (in my case, the state of California). Why does it follow that Noam's, and mine, are less worthy to you than the secretary's?

Or let's look at it this way: the university has a certain amount of money. It pays some of it to professors, as salaries, and some of it to doctoral students, as fellowships. We're newer in the system, but both they and us work in labs and libraries, do research, produce knowledge and, in general, add to the university's usefulness as an instrument for progress (perhaps Noam more than me). Is the professors' existance worth more than ours?

This may be clear to you. It is not clear to me, and perhaps to other readers too. True, in prehistoric societies , getting food was more important, in the very short run, than learning of better weapon-building techniques; those facilitated getting more, and more varied, food for the long run. I doubt that the hunters felt that the tool-builder was living at their expense. I find this comment reductionist and simplistic for a 21-century setting. At this point, with social complexity as it is, I feel it rather ridiculous to claim that academics are optional.

I have a feeling that what we're really arguing about (if we're, indeed, arguing and not having a Friday night whining session) is for an against an extreme form of capitalism, where the state is under no obligation to supply citizens with any services that better their lives in the long run. Not only is this unrealistic, it is dangerous, and reflects an extremely harmful set of priorities. Particularly since the current allocation of resources - seemingly leaning more toward the "short-term survival", security, and disregarding long term investments in science, knowledge and culture, will, I believe, prove detrimental to Israeli society. Once we're done "defending' ourselves, we may find we don't have much to defend.

Well, I think at this point we have nothing left but to agree to disagree.

By the way: I'm a woman; I'm always entertained by the default assumption made by several folks in the Ayal, when I'm compelled to write in a non-gendered language, that I'm a man (Ayelet and Bareket, you are probably getting a kick out of this). There was actually one fellow who adressed me as a man, twice, despite the fact that I was writing in Hebrew and using female forms in first person. I'm not saying it to needle you personally, just making an observation.