The Economist Magazine Cover For 10/19/2024

The Economist Read in browser October 19th 2024 How we chose this week’s image SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image The Economist Zanny Minton Beddoes Editor-in-chief As polling day draws close, we decided to devote our cover and a 16-page special report to the remarkable performance of the American economy. Our message is not only that it has left the rest of the rich world in the dust, but that America thrives despite its ugly politics. This cannot continue for ever. We liked this version of the flag as a celebration. As the stripes parade America’s extraordinary economic growth, the stars are raining down on them like ticker tape. In 1990 America accounted for about two-fifths of the G7 countries’ GDP. Today it makes up half. Output per person is now about 30% higher than in western Europe and Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan—gaps that have roughly doubled since 1990. Lately, China has gone backwards, too. Having closed in rapidly on America in the years before the pandemic, its nominal GDP has slipped from about three-quarters of America’s in 2021 to two-thirds today. This running back spilling greenbacks tells the story of America’s exceptionalism. Innate advantages play an important role in the economy’s success. America is a big country blessed with vast energy resources. The shale-oil revolution has propelled perhaps a tenth of its growth since the early 2000s. The enormous size of its consumer and capital markets means that a good idea dreamt up in any state can make it big across the other 49. Yet good policy has been important, too. America has long married light-touch regulation with speedy and generous spending when a crisis hits. Although a supersize stimulus during the pandemic fuelled inflation, it also helped the economy grow by 10% since 2020, three times the pace of the rest of the G7. This image of Americans ignoring such success warns that good policy can turn bad. Never mind that these neglectful voters seem to come from a constituency in Shanghai or Beijing: this is a sketch for an illustrator, not a draft. Our cover was to appear days after SpaceX had conducted a successful test flight of its giant Starship system. This newsy idea gets to the heart of a paradox. Just as the launch was testimony to American enterprise, so Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder, stands for all that is wrong with its politics. In his support for Donald Trump, Mr Musk has spread misinformation about voter fraud and hurricane ­relief and derided his opponents as ill-intentioned idiots. We decided to work up two of these covers: the flag and the rocket. The flag underlines how America’s worsening politics have had little visible effect on growth. Both Republicans and Democrats have resorted to protectionism and interventionism in the name of helping factory workers and at the ­expense of the wider economy. Mr Trump speaks of huge programmes to deport millions of non-citizens, many of whom have been fully integrated into the labour market for years, and is cavalier about institutions, including the Federal Reserve and the rule of law. You would never know it from the numbers. For all its energy, this cover fails to convey this tension. It says that Americans who talk down their economy should instead be celebrating. But we want to stress that the two candidates’ policies are endangering the extraordinary phenomenon that has brought Americans such prosperity. Our artist has put a lot of work into this image. The sketch looked like a fistful of cigarettes wrapped up in some dollar bills. Now we have the Starship’s 33 Raptor engines spewing fire and smoke, set against a glowering Texan sky. And, as befits the world’s most successful economy, we have swapped George Washington for Benjamin Franklin. All we needed was to correct the setting of our headline. We preferred it aligned, rocket-like, alongside the booster. Growth is not an inalienable right, but a gift to be cherished and nurtured. Yet as America becomes more divided, Kamala Harris and Mr Trump are promising ever more damaging policies—Mr Trump especially. Sooner or later, their harm will be apparent to all. Alas, by then, America’s rotten politics will struggle to engineer a rescue. Cover image • View large image (“The envy of the world”) Backing stories → America’s economy is bigger and better than ever (Leader) → The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust (Special report) → Voters won’t thank Kamala Harris for the state of the economy (United States) → Trump’s trillion-dollar tax cuts are spiralling out of control (Finance & economics)