Potpourri

An interesting article on Progressive Farmer about low-pressure tires and soil compaction.

Jayson Lusk has an interesting post on the basic facts (and some interesting intuition) about corporate and family farms.

An interesting post by Pete Boettke at George Mason U. on the political leanings of academic economists. Some of the loudest economic voices on the internet are staunchly anti-free-market. Paul Krugman is the most obvious example. Pete mentions a study by Dan Klein which suggests that most economists "lean left" although they do so to a much lesser degree than academics in other social science fields. I hope to conduct a similar study some day for agricultural economists.

The most recent Federal Open Market Committee minutes suggest that the Federal Reserve will not begin to raise interest rates until April or later. The Fed sees recent declines in oil costs as beneficial on net, but is concerned that inflation may not be high enough in the coming months. It's difficult to understand why someone would think that always-rising prices are good when they also believe that lower prices due to increased supply are bad.

Thomas DiBacco has an interesting piece on the one and only time the U.S. national debt was zero.

A recent entry in the Urban Dictionary is pretty hilarious considering the new criticism of the famous book on inequality by Thomas Piketty.