Thousands of important and intelligent men have never been able to grasp the principle of comparative advantage or believe it even after it was explained to them
Interpretation
The quote highlights how many intelligent individuals fail to understand a fundamental economic principle.
Paul Samuelson's quote emphasizes the challenge of comprehending the principle of comparative advantage, which states that individuals or nations can benefit from trade by specializing in the production of goods in which they have a lower opportunity cost. Despite its importance and utility in economics, even highly intelligent people struggle to grasp this concept fully, indicating that understanding economic theories often requires more than just intelligence; it requires a particular mindset and willingness to analyze and accept complex ideas.
In practice
In an economic lecture about trade theory.
To a person of analytical ability, perceptive enough to realise that mathematical equipment was a powerful sword in economics, the world of economics was his or her oyster in 1935. The terrain was strewn with beautiful theorems begging to be picked up and arranged in unified order.
I can't think of a president who has been overburdened by a knowledge of economics.
My belief is that nothing that can be expressed by mathematics cannot be expressed by careful use of literary words.
Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.
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Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago.
Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. Believe me, it will be enough.
The proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system of local living economies comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
The economic position is only flourishing on the surface. Germany is in fact dancing on a volcano. If the short-term credits are called in, a large section of our economy would collapse.
Perhaps the hardest challenge has been to persuade the public, impatient for rapid growth, of the need to ensure stability first. Growth, it is argued, is always more important, regardless of the looming economic risks.
Economists argue about the relative impact of immigrants versus robots on wage stagnation - voters don't care much. They blame immigrants. It's easier to get mad at a person from Macedonia or Mexico, taking your job than it is to get mad at a piece of technology from Silicon Valley.
We have designed a capitalist system wrong. We assume human beings are one-dimensional, all they do is make money, so we've created a money-centric world.
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