Is basic economics counter intuitive?

Bryan Caplan thinks not, (or at least he thinks it doesn't have to be), but I think he misses something. Basic economics is based on counterfactual reasoning (i.e. an understanding of opportunity costs), and no matter how eloquent Bastiat was at making this understandable, the concept of the "seen vs unseen" requires more sophistication to grasp than the concept of the "seen". The extent to which counterfactual analysis is necessarily counter intuitive is a different debate, but I'd say they're closely related.