My family was well off but not rich. I spent the four years I was an undergraduate working on the beach. And it wasn't because I was lazy; it was because my freshman class would go to a hundred different employers and wouldn't get a nibble. That was a disequilibrium system. I realized that the ordinary old-fashioned Euclidean geometry didn't apply.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the challenges faced by students in finding job opportunities despite their background and education.
Paul Samuelson's quote illustrates the difficulties many students encounter when they enter the job market, despite being well-educated. He emphasizes that traditional methods of job searching might not work in a changing economic landscape, where supply and demand do not match up effectively. This statement sheds light on the complexities of employment where even diligent efforts can lead to frustrating outcomes, thus highlighting a misalignment in the job market.
In practice
In a university seminar discussing job readiness, this quote can emphasize the competitive nature of the job market.
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.
Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago.
There's nothing in Keynesian economics that would allow you to solve stagflation. But there's nothing in neoclassical economics that would allow you to solve stagflation, either.
We shouldn't be profiting from our students who are drowning in debt while giving a great deal to the banks. That's just wrong.
What if there was a library which held every book? Not every book on sale, or every important book, or even every book in English, but simply every book - a key part of our planet's cultural legacy.
The first ten, twelve or fifteen years of life are excavated of inherent moral worth in order to accommodate a regimen of basic training for the adult years that many of the poorest children may not even live to know.
The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
The foundations of any subject may be taught to anybody at any age in some form.
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