they also don't work - at least not without turning an economy into 1950's Russia.
The real problem here is the incredible ignorance of the American voter. No-one should be able to get out of 8th grade without being able to see through the stupidity of most of the economic claims in an average US election.
We used to understand that you couldn't operate a democracy in an uneducated nation (NorthWest Ordinance Article 3 - 1787!), but we've managed to drop the ball big time. And it's not because we don't educate per se, it's because we've made a conscious decision expressly not to educate about all the things that matter politically. There are PhDs all over the town I live in who couldn't argue their way out of a paper bag on any real-world question of political economy.