Economics is not called the dismal science for nothing
Economics is called the "dismal science" because of it's "find[ing] the secret of this Universe in 'supply and demand,' and reducing the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone".
Carlyle took a different view, feeling that the "idle Black man in the West Indies" should be "compelled to work as he was fit, and to do the Maker's will who had constructed him".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science
Mencius Moldbug also has an interesting take on Carlyle, suggesting that his views on slavery and hierarchy were significantly more nuanced than what my pithy summary above describes. I have not managed to read enough Carlyle to form my own opinion (maybe on my next 24 hour flight).
https://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-ca... https://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/carlyl...
But the problem with economics is that it is often viewed or presented/used (by governments) as a hard science, while it is much closer to some humanities: a game of deducing, abstracting, and guessing.
Economies are hugely complex and intertwined systems, which are hard to understand and harder to predict, because they depend on so many variables.
Economic models often only work when everything is going well or down an established path, and not when you would actually need them.
Economics is not a hard science, and shouldn't be treated as such, but to claim it is more like the humanities is disingenuous. It is a social science. That is to say that it is still ultimately empirical, just that the empirical implications of working with humans makes the job a lot harder and ocassionally less repeatable (are we measuring innate human nature, or a fluid and ever changing culture?).