I don't think your analogy is a correct one. Here's something from 538: "A 2018 study conducted by Loungani and others looked at 153 recessions in 63 countrie

I don't think your analogy is a correct one. Here's something from 538: "A 2018 study conducted by Loungani and others looked at 153 recessions in 63 countries between 1992 and 2014 and found that the vast majority were missed by economists in both the public and private sector. This was painfully true in the case of the global financial crisis in 2008, which wasn’t officially declared a recession until it had been going for almost a year." Economists apparently can't predict the future. And they don't seem to be able to "predict" the present, or the recent past. So I guess in your analogy, it would be something like, "We were driving at night with an economist in the country, and they said, 'There are no boulders ahead that I can see'", and then you hit a boulder, car was totalled, you were severely injured, spent months in recovery, and then 9 months later the economist gets back to you with, "Recent data confirms that we did, indeed, hit a boulder." I think your argument is an argument from authority. If you can't "predict" the past, you are not an authority.