Författaren och ekonomen Harry Dent förutspår att börsen faller upp mot 90 procent

Why economists aren’t wealthy

You might think that, given the extreme levels of wealth that exist today, the richest economist would be someone who was still alive. But you’d be wrong.

Mark Skousen explains in a 2010 Daily Reckoning post how David Ricardo (1772-1823) became the richest economist in history (the post is excerpted from his 2009 book “The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of Great Thinkers”).

When he died, his estate was worth more than $100 million, in today’s dollars. So why are there not so many super rich economists walking around? There may be a mistake in the assumption that Ricardo’s being an economist had everything or anything to do with his being a success in the market. The assumption of a cause and effect relationship in Ricardo’s case is further dashed when you consider that he started his career as a broker and speculator. First he got rich, and then he got interested in how it all works. One Investopedia post attempts to explain why economists aren’t rich by arguing that their profession deals with theoretical rather than practical studies and that, even though they can make large amounts of money as quants, that only works if the market does not stray from their model.