Free Heroin, And Other Ideas That Won't Get You Elected

Earlier this summer, NPR's Planet Money assembled five prominent economists from across the political spectrum and gave them a simple task: Identify major economic policies they could all stand behind. In this podcast, they talk to those economists again. Episode 402: Free Heroin, And Other Ideas That Won't Get You Elected This time, we hear a bunch of the ideas some of them liked but others shot down — including free heroin for addicts, and $2 trillion in new deficit spending on infrastructure projects. It's amazing to hear the economists clash over engineering, beginning at the 7m30s mark. ASME has identified roads and bridges that nationwide need repair or replacing, to the cost of $2 trillion. Robert Frank, professor of management and economics at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, is for government spending. Russ Roberts, George Mason University economics professor, is his ideological opponent. Not so fast, Russ says. You can't trust engineers to make a decision where they might make money. As the saying goes, the fix is in. What do you think?