To clarify, you believe the common use of “steep learning curve” means easy to learn?

I was objecting to your definition of effort vs expertise. It's quite obviously expertise vs time/experience.

This is described in this wiki article that was linked in another comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_curve

Which also points out how people rarely use the term properly, and call something difficult to learn a "steep" learning curve. It's the opposite.