The Real Cost of Coal →

CONGRESS long ago established a basic principle governing the extraction of coal from public lands by private companies: American taxpayers should be paid fair value for it. They own the coal, after all.

Lawmakers set a royalty payment of 12.5 percent of the sale price of the coal in 1976. Forty years later, those payments remain stuck there, with actual collections often much less. Studies by the Government Accountability Office, the Interior Department’s inspector general and nonprofit research groups have all concluded that taxpayers are being shortchanged.

This is no small matter. In 2013, approximately 4o percent of all domestic coal came from federal lands. A recent study by the independent nonprofit research group Headwaters Economics estimates that various reforms to the royalty valuation system would have generated $900 million to $5.6 billion more overall between 2008 and 2012.

This failure by the government to collect fair value for taxpayer coal is made more troubling by the climate-change implications of burning this fossil fuel. Taxpayers are already incurring major costs in responding to the effects of global warming. Coastal infrastructure is being battered by sea rise and storm surges; forests are being devastated by climate-aided pest infestations; and studies are suggesting that temperature rises have increased the likelihood of devastating droughts in California.

Moreover, as the Council of Economic Advisers documented in a report last July because of the long-lived nature of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, these costs will continue to rise.

Exclusive: Amazon makes even temporary warehouse workers sign 18-month non-competes →

The more I read about Amazon's warehouses, the more I think of "indentured servitude." I'm surprised that this is legal.

The work is repetitive and physically demanding and can pay several dollars above minimum wage, yet Amazon is requiring these workers — even seasonal ones — to sign strict and far-reaching noncompete agreements. The Amazon contract, obtained by The Verge, requires employees to promise that they will not work at any company where they “directly or indirectly” support any good or service that competes with those they helped support at Amazon, for a year and a half after their brief stints at Amazon end. Of course, the company’s warehouses are the beating heart of Amazon’s online shopping empire, the extraordinary breadth of which has earned it the title of “the Everything Store,” so Amazon appears to be requiring temp workers to foreswear a sizable portion of the global economy in exchange for a several-months-long hourly warehouse gig.

The company has even required its permanent warehouse workers who get laid off to reaffirm their non-compete contracts as a condition of receiving severance pay...

In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas →

The confusion is telling, though. It shows that while keeping college-level discussions “safe” may feel good to the hypersensitive, it’s bad for them and for everyone else. People ought to go to college to sharpen their wits and broaden their field of vision. Shield them from unfamiliar ideas, and they’ll never learn the discipline of seeing the world as other people see it. They’ll be unprepared for the social and intellectual headwinds that will hit them as soon as they step off the campuses whose climates they have so carefully controlled. What will they do when they hear opinions they’ve learned to shrink from? If they want to change the world, how will they learn to persuade people to join them?

Women’s Integration into Combat Stuck in a Physical Stalemate →

Physical standards are- by far- the greatest sticking point when it comes to debates on women in combat. Opponents of gender integration have long argued that the average physical differences between men and women are proof that women are inferior. They also argue that any adjustments in the current physical standards would be tantamount to ‘softening’ ‘diluting’ or weakening the standards and thereby reducing military effectiveness. Focusing on whether women can meet the current physical standards maintains a stalemate in terms of their full integration into the US military and limit the military’s ability to develop standards that reflect modern warfare. There are three reasons for this:

1. Physical standards are out of date and disconnected from the job.
2. Physical standards are not as objective as we think.
3. There are no exclusive combat roles, and therefore no need for exclusive combat physical standards. Let me explain:...

Rangel: Reinstate the draft →

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) is re-introducing legislation that would reinstate a military draft in the U.S. and impose a “war tax” so that Americans “feel the burden” of ongoing military operations against Islamic militants.

"Armed conflict is unpredictable, chaotic, and costly. When I served, the entire nation shared the sacrifices through the draft and increased taxes. But today, only a fraction of America shoulders the burden. If war is truly necessary, we must all come together to support and defend our nation," Rangel, who served in the Army, said Thursday in a statement. "As a Korean War veteran, I know the toll war takes."

His Draft Act would open the draft to women and require everyone between the ages 18 to 25 to register for the Selective Service System.

Cisco Shipping Equipment to Fake Addresses to Foil NSA Interception →

Last May, we learned that the NSA intercepts equipment being shipped around the world and installs eavesdropping implants. There were photos of NSA employees opening up a Cisco box. Cisco's CEO John Chambers personally complained to President Obama about this practice, which is not exactly a selling point for Cisco equipment abroad...

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Now Cisco is taking matters into its own hands, offering to ship equipment to fake addresses in an effort to avoid NSA interception.

I don't think we have even begun to understand the long-term damage the NSA has done to the US tech industry.

Amazon just got permission from the FAA to start testing its delivery drones in the US →

After several years with little progress, the FAA has been busy of late. It took a big step last month when it published a proposal for new rules to help legalize commercial drone flight and has been granting a number of exemptions to different companies that want to begin field testing with flying robots.

Unfortunately those new rules, and the exemption granted to Amazon today, insist that the drones remain within line of sight of the pilot at all times. In Amazon's case they must also have "at least a private pilot’s certificate and current medical certification." Those kind of restrictions make sense for initial testing, but would definitely prevent the rollout of any scaleable commercial operation if they remain in place, since they severly limit the use of autonomous drones over a meaningful distance.

Measuring health care →

By using a lottery to assign coverage, Oregon had unintentionally created the perfect conditions for a randomized controlled trial that could reveal the true costs and benefits of health insurance. Since the population that received coverage was statistically equivalent to the group that didn’t, economists could simply compare outcomes between groups to gauge the effects of insurance. “Remarkably, this had never been done before in the United States,” says Finkelstein, who won the 2012 John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association for most significant contribution to economic thought by an economist under 40.

The results were stunning. Researchers found, for example, that Medicaid increased health care use and reduced rates of depression, despite often-heard claims that Medicaid coverage was worthless. Medicaid also increased visits to the emergency room — notwithstanding many policymakers’ predictions to the contrary. “The beauty and power of randomized evaluations is that they really allow you to be surprised,” Finkelstein says.

The study also showed that health insurance successfully provides a financial safety net. “People often think of health insurance as a way of improving health, but to economists, health insurance is a financial instrument. The first idea is not to improve health but to protect you financially against large medical expenses,” Finkelstein says. “We found Medicaid basically eliminates the prospect that a person will have a catastrophic financial issue.”

The results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment made headlines again and again, underscoring for Finkelstein the power that randomized evaluations have to change both public perception and policy debate. “Nobody is arguing about what the results are,” Finkelstein says. Instead, they’re arguing about what to do with this new information — and that is the way of the future.