In good times, economics had a reputation as a "political prudence theory", a scientific discipline that researched the best possible functioning of state-integrated economies. However, it was sometimes overestimated as a kind of "social physics" that was supposedly able to provide universally valid rules that could be applied everywhere and at all times.

At the end of the Alfred Eugen Ott Forum, Adolf Wagner shows that economics is in fact an ambivalent social science of the "approximate", in which different findings result from special applications and which requires both sensitivity and "tacit knowledge" from its users.

Against this background, economic aspects of distribution, employment and growth are discussed in detail. Last but not least, Wagner thus succeeds in critically classifying the currently intensively discussed "Zeitenwende" (turning point) in Germany's market-based democracy.