re: The Nobel Prize for Economics. WTF?

quote:

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If we've spent more than half a century recognizing the world's greatest economic thinkers, why do we still have inflation, recessions, financial crises, enormous government debt, and economies that seem perpetually unstable?

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Maybe because people behave crookedly, greedily, lazily, stupidly, and imprudently? Maybe because accidents and natural disasters occur? Maybe because understanding better (but still incompletely / imperfectly) economic phenomena is not the same as being able to fix all of them?

Or look at it this way: there are lots of diseases and medical conditions where the causes are pretty well understood, but people still get them due to their own choices and behavior. Should we expect more clean fixes from a 'social science' like economics than we do from a natural science like medicine?