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The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing sound economic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit of this task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatans whose shortcuts to an early paradise he debunks. - Ludwig von Mises

That\\u2019s a pretty lofty view of economics and economists. As such it is far, far away from any view that most people have, especially of economists. Anyone who is even the slightest bit informed as to the track record of economists and their pronouncements will at best see them as something like a weatherman. In this view, the economist tries to make honest predictions based on the available data but gets it wrong more often than not. At worst, people see the economist as exactly the kind of charlatan Mises decries in the above quote. Economics as a discipline has lost a lot of respect. In short, economics is in trouble.\\xa0

A big part of the problem is that too many economists don\\u2019t actually start with data. Not that they don\\u2019t use data. What they do is start with a theory that they prefer and then find the data to support their theory, ignoring or explaining away everything else. And that is on a good day. On a bad day (which seems to happen more and more) the economist is just providing quasi-intellectual cover to justify the policies of whichever government or corporation that they are working for. You can definitely see this if you pay attention to politics. Each party has its favorite economists to trot out to justify what they are doing, or to attack what the other team is doing, regardless of what the policy is. I first noticed this when way back in the Clinton administration, there was a Democrat move to do away with the \\u201cmarriage tax\\u201d and the Republicans opposed it. Once Bush was in office, the positions flipped. Not that I believe either party really cared about the tax. It was simply another political football.\\xa0

This is also apparent in the varying attitudes towards deficit spending. Both parties love it when they are in charge. They just spend it on slightly different things. If you pay too much attention to it, you just might drive yourself bonkers.\\xa0

Another issue is that modern economists are too focused on tinkering around with policy, hoping to manipulate the market to get the outcome they want. This leads to extremely shallow thinking as all they wind up doing is at best looking at surface data and then trying to manipulate that so it fits better with their vision. What they neglect is everything below the surface, everything that is actually driving the data they are responding to.\\xa0

Let\\u2019s get back to economists and their theories for a minute. Economists are often professors, teaching others about economics and how they work. One might be inclined to ask if they really know so much about economics, why aren\\u2019t they rich? Don\\u2019t they know how the systems work and how to make use of their knowledge to their own benefit? Perhaps it\\u2019s because there is more going on than their equations can account for.

That is one of the central aspects of Mises and his Austrian School of Economics, there is just too much data to actually absorb it all. With any economy, there are any number of variables that simply cannot be accounted for. That\\u2019s why Mises considered the idea of central planning and that one can control the market to be absurd. It is simply impossible to plan without knowing all the variables. Things will just happen whether you know the cause or not. Not only that, Mises understood that many if not most of the variables are not directly related to money, which is why he advocated for economists studying the social sciences.

Instead, perhaps we should be more humble and realize we can\\u2019t know everything and instead, observe the data as it is without imposing theories on it. Then perhaps we can move towards Mises\\u2019 goal of understanding the world a little better.\\xa0

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