Today’s elections are more sophisticated than in caveman days. Just barely. Now campaigns employ large staffs assigned to create detailed, 469-page plans on how they intend to deal with the economy. For the record, no one reads these. Not even the candidates. For all anyone knows there really isn’t a plan. It might be nothing more than a cover sheet, a page of contents, and 467 sheets of staff members playing hangman and tic-tac-toe.

It doesn’t matter. Each candidate has the exact same plan for fixing the economy, anyway. To tackle unemployment, for instance, all the candidates promise to “create new jobs.” They will accomplish this by stimulating the economy with an “economic stimulus package.” One way they will do this will be to reduce the tax burden by “reducing taxes.”

The problem with trying to fix the economy is that no one is sure how it actually works. The economy is a lot like the weather: we know it’s out there; we know it’s huge and complicated; but when it comes to predicting it, we might as well flip a coin.

No one is even sure where the economy came from. It showed up one day unannounced at Plymouth Plantation. Myles Standish said it could stay, but to “keep out of our way.” It didn’t. Now it’s so large you can’t walk down to a Starbucks without tripping over the economy at least twice on your way.

Here is how difficult it is to figure out the economy. Choose one: Are we heading for a recession because of the mortgage lending crises, high oil prices, and a tanking stock market? Or is the economy on the upswing because thousands of women are still willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a certain type of boot called – and this is not a typo - Uggs?

Granted, understanding women and shoes is a far greater challenge than understanding the economy, or the weather. My wife, Beth, who is not fashion obsessed in the least, and not one to buy things frivolously has nearly a dozen different pairs of shoes (for the record, none are Uggs). I, on the other hand, typically own one pair of sneakers at a time and will wear them everywhere I go until they are so worn out they are only still considered a shoe in the broadest sense that they have laces and once came in a box.

Now I admit I am no economics expert, but I believe my use-it-until-even-a-homeless-person-would-throw-it-out approach to footwear is detrimental to the economy. If everyone took my approach to shoes and extended this to every other consumer product on the market, within six months our nation’s economy would be ranked below Somalia’s. We’d be getting economic assistance from Mexico. On the bright side, we would no longer have an illegal alien problem.

Therefore, if the candidates really want to improve things, instead of creating another economic plan and playing hangman, they should do what every professional sports team does to increase revenue: they should sell official licensed apparel. In this case campaign apparel. For example, the John Edwards’ camp could sell tee-shirts imprinted with their campaign slogan: “Edwards for President in 2008! Or at least, Vice President!”

Not only would this help the economy, but the campaign finance rules could be changed so that this would be the only way for candidates to raise campaign funds. Think about it, if a big contributor wanted to buy influence by tossing money at a candidate they would first have to purchase 500,000 officially licensed Obama hoodies, Hillary caps, or Romney reversible jerseys to do it. How’s that for an economic stimulus package?

Perhaps if someone read the candidates’ economic plans, they’d find the licensed apparel idea in one. Excuse me if I don’t look, though, I have to go buy some new sneakers now.

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