There can't be rigorous arguments in economics or other "soft sciences". It is pointless to debate if we start disagreeing right there...
Is it really true that economics is a 'soft' science, or is it that people seem to have a ridiculously difficult time separating the
philosophy of economics from the actual
science of economics?
Every science, even the hardest of sciences, like mathematics and physics, also have multiple philosophies underlying them, but somehow people don't seem to get the two aspects confused.
Economics seems to be a special case in the sciences in a number of ways though. It seems that scientific thought advanced steadily throughout history in pretty much every field except one - economics. The ancient Greeks started to develop a science of economic thought, but somehow it seems to have just faded away, for reasons not entirely clear to me. The situation stayed that way for quite some time, until Adam Smith reestablished economics as a science.
It has to make you wonder - how could one aspect of existence, especially one so vital to our well-being, be left so utterly neglected for so long? Could it be that some folks have a vested interest in most people NOT having a real scientific understanding of economics? Could it be that some people STILL have conflicted interests along these lines, and profit from blurring the lines between economic science and economic philosophy?
It hasn't been neglected thinkers like Ludwig von Mises and Hayek create a distinct divide between the social science and the actual science. the social science in economic = at what point do people start paying more for lobster than for cod, when calculating a supply and demand problem. the actual science is when there is a limited supply, the price will increase if the demand
stays constant increases, or if there is monetary inflation and the demand stays constant the price will rise consistently if the new money is introduced equally.
it is for the exact reason that individuals are irrational and some are slow to learn, that Mises rejects the notion that you can objectively manage a central controlled money supply.
ie, it is because economists (of influence - Keynesian) blur the lines between science (as in the flow of gas moves from a high to a low pressure) to a social science as in (consumption is stable because per capita consumption of Ikea Lamps is constant - when what is actually happening is per capita consumption of lamps is declining, and due to the low quality more people are replacing them creating the illusion of stability.) and using that metric as an objective measure of price stability.
there is Economics the Hard science (the Austrian leaning View)
and there is Economics the soft science (the Keynesian View)
both are valuable, it just so happens that a central controlled economy is not an effective way to manage resources objectivly, so the soft science in economics should not venture parts the private hands of corporations.
the hard facts in any science are universal and can be leveraged but not manipulated, the same is true in economics the rest is the social science of economics.