IMHO, it comes down to:
1) How big is the total pie (e.g. what's the GDP)?
2) Is the pie getting bigger (i.e. economic growth)?
3) If so, is the pie getting bigger fast enough to provide a slice to the additional people who want a piece of the pie (i.e. is growth keeping up with population growth and immigration)?
4) Do you have to contribute to making the pie in order to qualify for having a slice (e.g. do you get money from the government even if you don't contribute to increasing the GDP)?
5) If the total pie isn't getting bigger, and you are committed to providing a piece to everyone - irrespective of if they help make the pie bigger or not - someone’s slice has to get smaller in order to make available pie for the additional pie eaters who want a slice (i.e. you can't spend the money that liberals spend on government programs without redistributing earnings - unless the GDP grows at a fast enough rate to fund all the spending. If you give more you either have to make more, or take more).
6) If you take from those who make the pie, and give to those who don't, how much can you take, and for how long, until those who make the pie quit making it?
7) How do you incentivize people to make more pie?
I mostly agree with that. Economics is a science, but it's a soft science. It is the study of human action -- what do people tend to do in a given situation.
You are correct that human behavior cannot be reduced to formulas and equations. The idea is nonsense and is an outgrowth of the socialists' belief that society can be planned and managed more effectively by wise technocrats than by us stupid individuals acting in our own best self-interest.
Wean them off all forms of welfare, so that if you don't eat, you will starve.
If politicians can't do it, mathematical reality will in the end.
The big problem is half the population is eating pie without making pie, and lots of the pie is make believe imaginary pie to begin with , ie financial fraud, equity and rel estate bubble, deficit spending by government and individuals.
Economics is actually a pretty reliable social science. It’s government interference with natural economic cycles that instills the inherent unpredictability we suffer from today. As the article states, it’s governments around the world that are the problem. They all want power, they all want to stay in power, and they all want to use that power. This is why our Founders sought Limited Government. Sadly, nobody in the world has that today.
“7) How do you incentivize people to make more pie? “
Two things keep Economics from being a science: Psychology and manipulation. Neither can be determined beforehand as neither is known. No one can predict how the pack will behave. To some degree it can be but not entirely. And, no one knows the amount of illegal manipulation that is going on behind the scenes and there is lots of it.
Economics is relegated to simple historical study. Economists are historians. They have a lousy record of predicting any future economic activity.
Economics is fundamentally very simple. I think it can be summed up in a quote (source forgotten): "Any moron can show that 2+2=4. It takes a genius to show that 2+2=5." Much of the "complexity" exists for the purpose of obscuring what is really going on.
The real value of an asset is the probabalistic expected present cash value of everything good that will come from the asset, minus the probabalistic expected present cash value of everything that one will have to spend to achieve that good. The value of an asset may be affected by unexpected events, but is not affected by the prices for which people buy and sell it. If people trade an asset for prices which spiral upwards of $100 each, but the asset can only be expected to generate $25 of real value, a price correction to $25 will not represent a loss of value. Rather, in any transaction above $25 the buyer should be viewed as having given (price - $25) to the seller, and in transactions below $25, the seller should be viewed as having given ($25 - price) to the buyer. If someone buys for $95 and sells for $100, the person loses $70 on the purchase and gains $75 on the sale (at the expense of the buyer who loses $75).
That all sounds complicated, but the key point is this: a lot of people endeavor to make assets appear to be worth more than they are, and to convince people that, should the assets be discovered not be worth what people thought, it was that discovery that made the assets worthless (as opposed to the assets having been worthless all along). If the number of shares outstanding in a company, times the price of those shares, substantially exceeds any realistic expectation of the company's time-adjusted future profits and/or eventual liquidation value, the shares are not worth the market price. Efforts to keep the stock price elevated may benefit those who sell shares at elevated prices, but every extra dollar received by a seller represents a dollar lost by a buyer. The net effect of such efforts is that while one may spend an unlimited amount of money trying to maintain the illusion that the shares are worth more than they actually are, such spending will not generate real value.