Great article, lots of trigger in this thread but what you're saying resonates.
If you read between the lines, you could pretty much say that as much time as you split between backend and frontend you would need to become a solid engineer in either of those domains.
You are not alone, and the good thing is Economics, political science, and literature are all highly literary. So read a book!
Have you heard of Keynes, Smith, Marx, Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, Emerson, Tolstoy, or Conrad? Great! Each of them has no less than three legendary books that you can spend weeks to months to years studying. Computer science is a bit different in that the landscape is fresh and the resources constantly shifting and growing, but the old fields, as always, can be studied safely on ink and paper.
You start with one author, you go through his or her influences, contemporaries, pupils, and you are guaranteed to have a healthy amount of daily reading material.
Reading texts is great, but it's only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to becoming educated in these topics. In the classroom, students read, discuss with their peers and professors, read and write essays, and are lectured by very smart people. You can only get so much out of the literature without the right tutelage.
