Economics is not a mathematical science. Economics is a social science that deals with the scarce means by which individuals seek to attain some subjectively valued ends, thereby reducing their felt uneasiness. In other words, economics is the study of how individuals seek to reduce their own uneasiness through autistic and consensual exchange.
It's the science of means, choice and human action.
For the most part, this field of study has been HIJACKED by nihilists, collectivists and interventionists of all flavors who view human beings as clay dolls on which to conduct experiments in an attempt to verify their various hypotheses, all of which are based on aggregate measurements of economic data and fictitious mathematical constants.
These determinists have no regard whatsoever for the fact that people are individuals with free will, goals, fears and PREFERENCES of their own, and seek to impose their own preferences on others BY FORCE. They view the economy as a deterministic machine which needs to be tweaked and oiled by some wise benefactor (usually themselves) rather than as the choices, action, exchanges and cooperation which demonstrate the actual preferences of real, individual human beings.
This deterministic view of economics has infected all of the mainstream media, all of government, and almost all of academia. By unnecessarily ladening the field of economic study with inane mathematics, most of which are akin to numerology and none of which correctly express the actual preferences of real people, its purpose had been obfuscated and its wisdom had been made largely inaccessible to the general public (which is only just starting to change, thanks to the Mises Institute). The vast majority of people don't have the intrinsic motivation to deal with the veil of mathematics with which economics is unnecessarily cloaked.
This, of course, is by design. If classical economics was taught to school children, they'd realize that fractional reserve central banking is an intergenerational pyramid scheme before they were old enough to vote, thus making it significantly more difficult to get them to shoulder the tax burden for debts incurred before they were even born. Likewise, if the mainstream media told its audience the truth about classical economics and fractional reserve central banking, it would be a lot harder to sell advertising spots to politicians who bribe voters with the blood money of their own children.
This has ironically and predictably resulted in both mistrust of economics and demand for the very type of market intervention which caused this mistrust in the first place - regulation, bailouts, price floors and price ceilings.
The economically illiterate are thus in part victims of their own ignorance.