Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

On the Interstate – Part 1

In my view, how much we like some place depends primarily on two factors. One is the people we know there, and the other is the opportunities the place offers us to explore our interests.

(The image on the left is a graphic of the interstate highway system. Note that it is denser on the East than the West. Click on the image to get to the wiki page on the interstate highway system.)

I like living in the US. I have a large number of friends and acquaintances in the US (but no family and I don’t have my own family, anyway), and I can indulge my hobbies and my interests. One of my passions is the open road. I love road trips. The US is made for road trips. Continue reading “On the Interstate – Part 1”

AMC – Dolphins

By NASA–Wikimedia commons

I have never seen dolphins in the sea — only in captivity at the SeaWorld in San Diego, CA, and at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, CA.

It’s hard to believe that these animals evolved from land-dwelling mammals to become aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. The wiki says —

Dolphins are descendants of land-dwelling mammals of the artiodactyl order (even-toed ungulates). They are related to the Indohyus, an extinct chevrotain-like ungulate, from which they split approximately 48 million years ago.

The primitive cetaceans, or archaeocetes, first took to the sea approximately 49 million years ago and became fully aquatic by 5–10 million years later.

Continue reading “AMC – Dolphins”

9/11: 21 Years Ago

It was 21 years ago today, almost to the hour as I write this, that Islamic terrorists began their deadliest attack on the US.

I was a grad student at UC Berkeley then. I was woken around 6 AM Pacific time (9 AM Eastern) by my housemate, Wayne, talking on the phone in the next bedroom. His mother had called from the mid-West to tell him about the planes crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. The living room TV was on. I watched the towers come down in real time. Continue reading “9/11: 21 Years Ago”

The Queen is Dead

Well, you might say “who cares that the empress of an already past empire is dead,” and you’d be justified. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is not the global hegemon it used to be. I grant you that.

But Elizabeth II must have been a remarkable person for having reigned so long during often extremely turbulent times. For 70 years. She appears to have been a permanent fixture of the world — something like the Dalai Lama. Continue reading “The Queen is Dead”

Economic Freedom of the World 2022

The Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report 2022, published by the Fraser Institute, is available for download (pdf) here. It reports on the economic freedom for the year 2020. The exec summary begins with: Continue reading “Economic Freedom of the World 2022”

Ganapati Vighan Haran

This is a tradition I stick to. I try to post on Ganesh Chaturthi every year, and today is no exception.

Born in Nagpur, Maharashtra, two Hindu festivals were paramount for me — Durga Puja is common to all Bengalis, and then there’s Ganesh Puja which is common to people in Maharashtra. That’s central to who I am.

My home in the US is sparsely decorated but I have a wall-hanging in the kitchen. It was a house-warming gift from my friend Yoganand. That’s a picture of it at the top of this post. Continue reading “Ganapati Vighan Haran”

Dhan Vapasi — Credit Constraint

How can the poor be helped is the most insistent question that the bleeding-hearted ask but only the hard-headed can answer. The fact that one has to understand is that the state of being poor is the background, default, standard state of every one of us.

No one is born wealthy. Everyone is born naked, helpless and poor. Sure, some are born to sweet delight but most us reading this were not born to an endless night.[1] We were born to parents who were not poor, and could afford to give more us than what was needed for basic survival. And that makes all the difference. Non-poor parents are able to provide “credit” to their children. That credit helped us, their children, to become capable of producing wealth. We, in turn, can then provide credit to our own children — and the cycle continues. Continue reading “Dhan Vapasi — Credit Constraint”

Dhan Vapasi – not a Batshit Crazy idea

In the previous piece on Dhan Vapasi, I declared that the government must not own any property. The government’s job is to provide a service to the community. Provision of a service does not require ownership of property or even the tools. One could have tools one uses to provide a service — a vacuum cleaner if you are in the house-cleaning business, for example — but you if you don’t own one, you rent one. The government provides governance services and that does not in any way require those in government to own anything at all, let alone owning private property and least of all people. This is not that hard to understand. Continue reading “Dhan Vapasi – not a Batshit Crazy idea”

Dhan Vapasi – Public Property

In a previous post, Restitution of Stolen Property, I had offered to answer questions on “Dhan Vapasi.” Anirudh asked a set of questions, which I answer here.

To understand the concept of Dhan Vapasi (that’s Hindi for “wealth return”), I recommend a visit to the DhanVapasi.com site. I recommend reading the Dhan Vapasi booklet (pdf) for a getting a good understanding of the idea. Rajesh Jain and I had proposed the idea about five years ago. Continue reading “Dhan Vapasi – Public Property”

Airports

SFO

The answer to the post A Simple Puzzle is “the number of airports.” The US has the largest number of airpots in the world: around 20,000 — give or take a few dozens.

It’s not hard to explain why this is so. The US is vast, is rich, and has been the pioneer in aviation since the beginning of powered flight in 1903.

Continue reading “Airports”