[viztor]

I read the comment about the unreliability of economics, however I do like to point one thing, most economical model fit well when the economy is doing ok or within a certain range of parameters, until something outside of those safe area happens. Think of 2008, and think of the economical impact of the pandemic. It's impossible to account for in prior models and thoughts as those are nonlinear events almost no one can predict. This is the thing with economy, we can only know a bit about our position and surroundings, but we have no way of knowing if we are in a local optimum, or if we are approaching a tipping point that invalidates all prior models. There are variables that don't matter until they reach a certain mass, there are metrics we simply can't find quantitive method to measure, let alone to predict. Economics is always messy, and with a lot of the classic thoughts proven wrong, we should be wary of any of the assumptions we make.

[hgomersall]

Except that some economists did predict the global financial crisis based on their models. The thing that marked them out was that they were all heterodox economists. Largely the predictions were based on a solid understanding of the financial system, something mainstream economics completely ignores. https://voxeu.org/article/no-one-saw-coming-or-did-they

[jollybean]

It's a bit backwards looking in that it can assess known quantities.

But far beyond 'Black Swan' events it's hard to account for innovations, geopolitical shifts, things that change the dynamic.

Plastics, the dishwasher, women in Engineering and the workplace, the birth-control pill and Rock and Roll combined to shift things in ways we could not put down in math, at least beforehand.

But the biggest 'black hole' is that it does not account for consumer surplus: we only measure what is bought and sold, at that price. We don't measure the leverage gained by consumers for cheap fashion, the benefits of more variety in goods, more vacation, shifting to bikes from cars etc..

The data is still a beneficial area of study however.