samloveshummus

The first one's probably culturally dependent; if you start asking personal questions to a cashier in London you'll get yourself mentally red-flagged as someone who's oblivious to social mores and possibly struggles with disinhibition.

But the real question is what do you study. Let's say you want to make an "evidence-based policy" to raise taxes, commission a study that proves some obvious talking point like: people would be happy to pay an extra $10 tax to get more libraries or something. Conversely, if you want to make an "evidence-based policy" to lower taxes, commission some study proving how much people put into the local economy when they pay less tax, or something.

The problem is that deciding policy is about negotiating between values and balancing the interests of different stakeholder groups in society. There are always points that favour either side of any argument, and if you want a nice respectable piece of publicity you can commission a study "proving" some (probably uncontroversial) point that favours yours side. But that doesn't address the fundamental problem of the conflict over values and incompatible interests, and is quite possibly harmful to the debate by hiding the real questions that need to be answered.

That's such a moronic response, and the fact it has so many upvotes proves that this thread is already infested with pro-Israeli astroturfers.

Not really, that's nothing more than an Israeli propaganda line; it's the occupying Israelis who do all of the rejecting.

At the time I commented, OP's comment had -13 votes, that had like +10; it's unbelievably frustrating to see glib remarks getting upvoted against something that I've got a lot personally invested in, having loved ones continuing to be profoundly affected by the ongoing brutalization by Israel and not really knowing how to help them except via BDS.

As to your second question, I've tried to address it in this comment.