Yes, economics is science, and the people who don't understand that and love to point out how economists are never right in their predictions about the economy fundamentally have no idea what the field is even about.
Economics is not about predicting the stock market or economy as a whole, nor is it about coming up with excuses for free market capitalism and neoliberal agendas. It's about studying things like market failures, tax incidence, deadweight losses etc etc etc and coming up with solutions.
So basically creating a strawman toy model of actual complex economy and solving it. That's what theoretical physicists do initally but once developed they get to prediction stage. Just like rational agent axiom is false, I wonder what other badly formulated axioms does economics harbour.
> So basically creating a strawman toy model of actual complex economy and solving it
Uh, no. Read up on what economists did to empirically study and fix the kidney market and how many lives that has saved. (before you start typing, no, it wasn't to sell kidneys to the highest bidder)
> rational agent axiom
If you knew anything about economics, you'd know that no economist subscribes to any "rational agent axiom". But you have made up a strawman in your head so enjoy poking sticks at it.
Economics is not about predicting the stock market or economy as a whole, nor is it about coming up with excuses for free market capitalism and neoliberal agendas. It's about studying things like market failures, tax incidence, deadweight losses etc etc etc and coming up with solutions.