Are Aesop’s fables, such as “The Ant and the Grasshopper” still taught to school children? When winter arrives the industrious and thrifty ant refuses to share its food with the hungry grasshopper who had frivolously spent the summer singing.

When I was of primary school age, there was no doubt that virtue lay with the ant. Survival required diligent work, foresight and prudent saving. The grasshopper’s plight made the point.

Later at university, I encountered Paul Samuleson’s introductory textbook on economics. One instructive parable was of a benevolent ruler who kept grain prices low when people were starving from a shortage of grain. His dying subjects blessed him, unaware that by making supply uneconomic he was causing greater starvation. The heart should not rule the head.

But it is human nature that old lessons must be relearnt. Hence the enduring power of fables.

Earlier this month, the UK magazine, The Economist, asserted that the ant is the villain in the story.

Well not in exactly those words. To be precise, it blamed the Germans (the ants) for being too productive and saving too much. Spendthrift countries (the grasshoppers) were its victims.

Ouch. Back in 1817, UK economist David Ricardo explained the theory of comparative advantage. Mere productivity differences can’t cause trade imbalances. 

Okay, Ricardo’s insight is a bit counterintuitive and takes a few minutes to understand. But, really, what economist could overlook it? Even more gallingly, The Economist was founded in 1843 to espouse free trade. An elderly moment perhaps?

In another blunder it claimed that German thrift caused a global lack of demand. Oh dear. This can’t explain why unemployment rates are very low in countries like Japan and Germany and very high in some much smaller economies. Mispriced labour could explain such differences, but the grain parable seems to be lost on The Economist.

Unhappily the professional embarrassment about the mantra of a deficiency of aggregate demand runs deeper. French economist Jean-Baptiste Say pointed out in 1803 that the income earned from production suffices to purchase that production.

But even if Say’s and Ricardo’s insights are too impenetrable for The Economist in 2017 why abandon common sense? Why blame the productive and thrifty for the problems of others?

Aesop did not. And he was Greek no less.

But then again, he did not write for The Economist.