Damn you, I was just about to post this! 
Classic.
New Classical economics is a macroeconomic application of neo-classical economics and, from what I can tell, it seems to expose some of the ridiculous aspects of Neo-classicalism itself. No f***ing clue what the difference between neo and new Keynesianism is. Wikipedia just seems to make new out to be a defense of the sticky price assumptions of neo.
So Neodoxy, did you read it yet?
I couldn’t believe that apparently they fell for something from The Onion before. Fooled twice, shame on them!
((***Edit: apparently commenters are calling it a misleading article in the way it characterizes the government’s requirement, and suggests this one instead.))
This is just disgusting. Prepare to be angry reading this piece:
Raisin farmers are required to give 47% of their crop to the federal government, for free.
Tis the season to give thanks. And for the last 80 years, the federal government has required raisin producers to “give thanks” for the privilege of selling their raisins nationally by requiring them to fork over up to half of their raisins – for free. A lawsuit raising a constitutional challenge to the program has now made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is Horne v. Department of Agriculture.
The program, operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has a rather Orwellian-sounding name – the “Raisin Marketing Order.” In a nutshell, under this program, every year, as a condition for “letting” farmers sell their raisin crops in interstate commerce, the federal government has taken up to 47% of the farmers’ raisins – often for no payment at all, or below the cost of producing the raisins. The program has its origins in Great Depression efforts to fix the prices of agricultural crops. Don’t care much for raisins? Similar programs cover a variety of other agricultural products, such as walnuts, almonds, prunes, tart cherries – and cranberries!
…A district court judge ruled that the Constitution’s prohibition against unjust takings of private property didn’t apply to the Hornes, essentially agreeing with the government that the raisins rightly belonged to the government because the farmers “voluntarily chose to send their raisins into the stream of interstate commerce.” Sheesh; sounds like the federal government follows the old adage, “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine, too.”
When the Hornes appealed their case and it finally reached the full Ninth Circuit, the court told the Hornes that they couldn’t even raise their Takings Clause defense in that court. The Ninth Circuit told the farmers they had to pay the penalties
Clayton -
Has there been any First Amendment challenges of prohibitions against recording at international borders or in courtrooms?
I highly recommend this lecturer to the attention of anyone on the forums who is interested in, but perhaps intimidated or turned-off by, mathematics. In particular, he is extremely lucid, eschews obfuscation, and presents mathematics nearly from an “action-oriented” perspective… why did people initially concern themselves with these abstract problems, how do they matter to human thought both in the particulars of numerical problem-solving and in the broadest sense of knowledge? Most importantly, how does mathematics “fit” with “ordinary” (physical, metaphysical) reasoning?
Norman Wildberger Math History
Clayton -
Tax activist Grover Norquist hits Obama over his Keynesianism as economic fantasies:
“Obama has put his ridiculous left-wing fantasy theories of Keynesianism above the lives of 11 million families in this country.”
President Obama’s tax theories, Norquist stated, have been an “extremely bad thing,” and that taxation as a whole is having a fundamentally negative impact on Americans.
“There’s no reason to raise taxes, taxes should be lower,” Norquist told host Steve Inskeep. “The problem we have is that government spends too much — not that taxes are too low.”
“Obama has a theory and his theory is wrong – that if government takes people’s money and spends it you magically have twice as much money.”
Love that last bit, economic multiplier
Rand Paul Goes on the Record for Higher Tax Revenue
Supreme Court: Citizens Recording their Contacts With Police Officers Are Constitutionally Protected
An Open Letter to Libertarians: Don’t Be Fooled By Rand Paul
Tyler Cowen Comments on the Intrade Shutdown
Warren Buffett Totally Destroyed on His Supposed Tax Views
Americans Forced to Close Their Intrade Accounts
End the Pretense that Government Schools and Prisons Are Different
Protecting Us from Monopoly by Protecting Privileged Producers from Competition
Times Bureau Chief in Jerusalem will now have her Facebook entries edited
AP believes it found evidence of Iran’s work on nuclear weapons
I’ll put this here from The Skeptical Libertarian post:
Next in our continuing series of “There, I Said It”:
There is nothing wrong with fractional reserve banking, as such.
View the comments. I’m beginning to suspect The Skeptical Libertarian of being skeptical or libertarian, they are die hard atheists with die hard hard on for Big Pharma. Could be Objectivists in hiding.
Now that it comes to mind, is it possible tto write a piece on these guys without enacting a flame war between them and V.R.? I sort of think a critique could be due on these guys and where they came from (sort of out of nowhere, but I think some other members on here said one of the guys frequented the Ron Paul forums).
Congratulations Jeremiah Dyke!
Clayton -
Geithner suggested $1.6 trillion in tax increases
Doesn’t the US already spend $4 trillion a year ($2.5t taxes + $1.4t borrowing)?
With a GDP of $15t, the gove is spending more than 25% of every dollar earned in the country. They want to raise that to $5.6t? over 30% of each dollar?
And the only thing standing in their way are republicans?
***edit: over 10 years. Oh. why do they always say ‘over 10 years’ when figuring these things :\
- _***edit: over 10 years. Oh. why do they always say ‘over 10 years’ when figuring these things :_
Quite simple: It’s basically a trick to have headlines that read like they’re actually making any kind of significant progress. Everyone knows we’re running $1-1.5 trillion deficits, so if they came out and said “we propose raising tax revenue by $0.1 trillion per year, still leaving us with a deficit of $1.3 trillion instead of 1.4” everyone would know immediately that the system is fucked.