> The incentives are also out of alignment - politicians have an enormous incentive to promote economic theories that let them pork barrel to constituents.

If this were the case, the United States would have adopted full-on UBI socialism decades ago. Or at least, the net taker states would have prioritized advocating for that sort of thing. What we've actually seen is the complete opposite to your theory.

The actual incentives that politicians have are not to their constituents, but to their sponsors.