Question speaks for itself. Since opinions differ so much, I'd like to see the difference in opinion on what exactly "economics" is according to you
This isn't a Debatable definition: The Definition of Economics is the study of the efficient allocation of scarce resources..
Here is the definition of what I do everyday. This is from a Phd Financial Economist (me): Economics is the study of allocational efficiency: Devising ways to increase throughput in various financial processes; to be able to maximize overall output in the financial system (usually by an effective and an efficient allocation of scare resources).
My BSc is in Financial Economics as well. I didn't need to take all the thunder out of allocative efficiency being at the heart of economics. The OP is obviously not educated in the subject so any efficiency measured by way of optimal outcome is pretty much omitted entirely and politicized to such an extent that another obvious objective of him is to ignore that politics is not science and that the financial economists do not consider politics to be anymore predictive of associative outcomes than if one who claims to be an economist really does prove what outcomes should be. Insofar as I see, there is no definition that meets what economics really is and as such, nobody need respond to the poll. Because economists identify themselves as being so named out of a broad definition, they tend to claim they are politically agnostic when they are really trying to remove the appearance of conflicts of interest in social commentary but really every economist will normally recognize political from allocative issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_economics http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/positiveeconomics.asp
I only have a BS in econ which is exactly what I was told we were learning BS. I was told we were being trained to manipulate statistics to make people believe what we want them to believe. The problem I had was I could only understand every other word of the professor I had for half the classes.