A tribute to Karl Marx on his birthday, 5 May (1818). Oil on canvas, done some years ago.

Spring dandelions outside my window.

Samuelson wrote about his first encounter with Euclidean geometry & Pythagoras’ theorem in school & how it reminded him of Keats’ “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.” Those who learned mathematics in St. Xavier’s School, Kolkata, from Mr. Bhaumik in the 60s, will understand this.

Religious fundamentalists & hyper-nationalists harm their nation’s progress because instead of working hard & doing mathematics, literature & science, they spend all their time trying to show that 5000 years ago their ancestors worked hard & did mathematics, literature & science.

Ithaca summer, philokalist’s dream.

Washington, D. C.

Paul Samuelson described his research career as one where he was “overpaid and underworked.” When his friends pointed out that he worked “all the time, weekends & during vacations”, he clarified that for him, work was play. He added, “I am notorious for shirking tasks I hate.”

Which country?

Birthday of one of the world’s great film directors, Satyajit Ray. With Marlon Brando, Indira Gandhi, Ravi Shankar & Nehru.

New law & econ paper series at Cornell. einaudi.cornell.edu

There will come a time when people, looking back at today’s extreme inequality will be shocked that we tolerated this, the same way that we get shocked that our ancestors tolerated slavery & serfdom.

Interesting observation by Ken Arrow on modesty. He quotes Sherlock Holmes on why modesty may not be a virtue: “To the logician all things should be seen as they are, and to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from from the truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.”

My paper in Synthese, 2022, on morals and Greta’s Dilemma, in Chinese translation.
kaushikbasu.org/wp-content/upl…

Was waiting to get these books. The challenge now is to read them.

My grandson in beautiful Istanbul.

New paper series from Cornell's Einaudi Center launched: CRADLE Law & Economics Papers.
Opening papers by Ariel Rubinstein & Michele Piccione, Ajit Mishra & Andrew Samuel, Pengfei Zhang & Ji Li, and Robert Hockett. Submissions open.
Cornell University Einaudi Center…

My OpEd in Bangla on managing economic inequality.
anandabazar.com/editorial/essa…

Hobbes famously noted that, without the strong Leviathan, life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish & short. What he didn’t say is that with the wrong Leviathan, life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish & shorter.
Hence, the case for democracy.

The joy of research on a weekend. (Can you guess the artist on my computer screen?)

Latest data (from the World Inequality Lab) show inequality in India has reached alarming levels, last seen in colonial times.
The colonial masters had managed to persuade people that such inequality was good for them. Luckily, everybody couldn’t be fooled & colonialism ended.