The Best and Worst Economic Ideas of This Election Season

By Robert Pollin, AlterNet
Posted on February 27, 2012, Printed on March 2, 2012

As the severe unemployment crisis drags into its third year, proposals for solving the crisis are proliferating. Still more ideas will be tossed into the mix as the 2012 election season intensifies.

These proposals include some good, some less good, as well as some truly awful ideas. The plan offered by President Obama last September included a mix of some good ideas, such as more spending on infrastructure and education, along with some bad ones, like cutting Social Security taxes (otherwise known as payroll taxes).

The single worst idea in the mix, supported by deficit hawks in both the Democratic and Republican parties, is that we are facing a fiscal train wreck and that we therefore, above all, need to cut government spending. At the same time, there are actually some major avenues still open for stimulating job creation—both because they could create lots of jobs relatively quickly and because they could do so cheaply—that most policymakers and politicians have thus far ignored.