So far all the solutions the big economics brains are coming up with are really just stop gap measures that won’t actually fix the problems, but will extend them.

What we need is more old school, more populist, more Rooseveltian. We need to be able to trust in our futures. We need to be able to pay our bills, feed, house and cloth our families. We need the security of knowing that one unlucky healthcare crisis won’t lead to certain ruin.

We have to do the hard slog work of rebuilding our economy from the bottom up. And by the bottom I mean the most desperate of us first. Previous economic buoys have come from loosening credit, rather than giving people actual economic gains. We need to create more jobs and we need those jobs to actually cover the cost of living. We need to decrease the wealth gap. We need to keep people in their homes.

And so far not a single proposal from either party or either presidential candidate does those things. All they do is stave off the bottom for a little while.

This is going to be hard work. But the benefits of doing things the hard slog way are increased security for all of us, not just the temporary exhale of the baited-breath banksters.