Key takeaways from The Economist’s 2024 summer double-issue

Knowledge is power

Hey Friends,

Welcome to Field Research, the humor and satire newsletter written and produced by me, Amran Gowani.

I’m a mad scientist turned MBA scumbag turned semi-competent stay-at-home-dad and author. My debut novel Leverage — a propulsive, darkly hilarious Wall Street thriller — will be published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in Summer 2025.

In today’s post I’ve dissected, summarized, and satirized The Economist’s annual summer double-issue. I did this exercise last August and it proved quite entertaining, so I’m hoping my encore performance delivers. Either way, once you’re finished reading, you’ll be an informed global citizen.

Enjoy the show.

The Economist’s iconic branding remains timeless, however.

Key takeaways from The Economist’s 2024 summer double-issue

LEADERS

The Economist smugly calls its opinion pieces Leaders. Behold this week’s hot takes.

Can Kamala Harris win?: Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy must overcome several hurdles, including her prosecutorial track record in California, the mess she inherited at the U.S.-Mexico border, and persistent inflation during Biden’s term. None are insurmountable, but she’ll still lose because she’s Black, South Asian, and female.

A global gold rush is changing sport: Digital distribution platforms (e.g., Netflix) and fans favoring stars over franchises (e.g., Lionel Messi vs. Inter Miami) means your hometown team is going to suck even more, and the rich asshole who owns your hometown team is going to get even richer.

MAGA Republicans are wrong to seek a cheap dollar: The party which purports to worship “free markets” above all plans to manipulate the U.S. dollar on a global scale. Shocking.

Germany’s failure to lead the EU is becoming a problem: The EU coalition is such a discombobulated dumpster fire everyone wants Germany to step up and take charge. Surely Britain could—oh, right.

How to ensure Africa is not left behind by the AI revolution: Countries across Africa lack critical technology infrastructure, which could limit their ability to take advantage of the “AI revolution.” Thankfully, The West played no part in creating these structural disadvantages, which means those savages will just have to pull harder on their algorithmic bootstraps.

UNITED STATES

Cornering Kamala: VP Harris has repeatedly shifted with the political winds and doesn’t have a clear policy agenda. Can you believe a politician (e.g., adverse selection personified) would prioritize power over principles?

Clear choice: Overturning Roe was a disgrace — and a major own goal for the GOP. Legalizing abortion rights should become Harris’ strongest talking point.

Kamala is “brat”: A TikTok user created a supercut of Harris going ham and overlaid it with a song called “Von dutch” by Charli XCX. The election may be brat, but the republic remains on life support.

Status clusterfuck: If elected, President Harris would largely continue the failed foreign policies of the last three decades. Great.

Garbage in: Election polls are unreliable at best and bullshit at worst. The media refuses to learn this, but you should.

Freed spirits: A libertarian think tank convinced a MAGA-appointed judge to reinstate America’s most fundamental freedom: making moonshine in a bathtub.

Race, class, and immobility in America: Harvard researchers collected longitudinal data and analyzed economic outcomes for birth cohorts from 1978 and 1992. The study determined the “race” gap has narrowed (good), the “class” gap has widened (bad), and poor people still have fuck all odds of becoming rich people (ugly). Consider these takeaways.

It pays to be born rich:

For children born into high-income families, household income increased for all races between birth cohorts.

Converging outcomes are problematic and inequitable:

A black child born to poor parents in 1992 earned $1,400 a year more than one born in 1978. A similar white child earned $2,000 less than one born in 1978. But on average, a poor white child still earned $9,500 more than a poor black child.

Rags to riches narratives are horseshit:

While there has been a reshuffling of opportunities for Americans trying to escape the lowest rung, there has been no progress at all for routes into the upper class. For the vast majority of poor black children, who continue to have a 3% chance of rising from the bottom to the top quintile, and poor white children, whose chances have fallen from 14% to 12%, that door remains firmly shut.

THE AMERICAS

Cuban catastrophe: The Communist Party’s corruption and contradictions have caused an economic collapse in Cuba, which has prompted the government to cozy up to China and Russia. Who’s up for another Missile Crisis?

Currency conundrum: Ecuador, El Salvador, and Panama adopted the U.S. dollar to ensure currency stability and smoother integration into the global economy. Unfortunately, the strong dollar has also made exports less attractive, exacerbating budget deficits and national debts. Macro’s a bitch, then you die.

ASIA

Warrior nation: Surrounded by nuclear-armed belligerents and saddled with unreliable allies, Japan is aggressively remilitarizing. What could go wrong?

Theater of operations: Taiwan’s armed forces have been cosplaying a Chinese invasion, but everyone knows there’s no substitute for the real thing.

Magnanimous Modi: After an electoral chastening, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is attempting to buy the affection of the proletariat and his new coalition partners with a pork barrel budget.

Bangladeshi burning: Sheikh Hasina is proving female authoritarians can be just as corrupt, malicious, and venal as their male counterparts.

CHINA

Hedging bets: At the Chinese Communist Party’s “third plenum,” the Central Committee tried to stop worrying and learn to love The Invisible Hand. They failed.

Muzzled speech: The Wall Street Journal fiercely defends editorial freedom — unless they’re operating in a massive media market run by a totalitarian regime.

MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA

Heart of darkness: Backed by thousands of Rwandan troops, and tacitly aided by the Ugandan military, the rebel group M23’s insurgency against the Congolese government is just getting started.

Bibi the bullshitter: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped empty platitudes on Congress and air strikes on civilians, then received a standing ovation from Republicans.

EUROPE

Drone commander: Colonel Vadym Sukharevsky, a thirty-nine-year-old wunderkind, has been appointed head of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces and hopes to “qualitatively” offset Russia’s quantitative advantage on the battlefield.

Bunga Bunga in Milan: Right-wing dipshits named Italy’s second-biggest airport after their country’s second-shittiest Prime Minister.

Mutually assured destruction: European leaders counted the number of bombs hitting Ukraine and thought: We should probably build a collective missile defense system to protect ourselves against Russia — but not until we piss and moan about who gets to be in charge, which weapons we should buy, how many, and from whom. In other words, the EU is the world’s largest, most dysfunctional homeowner’s association.

BRITAIN

Rishi robbed: Labour claims they inherited a shite economy, but during the final months of Rishi Sunak’s reign inflation had cooled and GDP was growing faster than any other G7 country. Another Brown Brother done dirty by the British.

Swan song: Apparently one of King Charles III’s official titles is the “Seigneur of the Swans,” and every summer he’s supposed to sit in a boat on the Thames and count the aquatic birds in an archaic ceremony called “Swan Upping.” This is almost as stupid as still having a king.

Voter suppression: Britons don’t bother voting anymore. If you look at the country’s recent slate of Prime Ministers, can you really blame them?

Fallen empire: Britain’s warmongering Generals desperately want to bulk up their middling military. Sadly, the government’s broke, and Winston Churchill ain’t walking through that door.

Awkward allegory: Harland and Wolff, the once proud company which built the Titanic, and the “aircraft-carriers, cruisers and tanks which helped defeat Nazi Germany,” is a shell of its former self. And bankrupt. And about to be de-listed from the stock exchange.

INTERNATIONAL

Olympic-sized regrets: France will inevitably become the latest country to realize hosting the Olympics is a geopolitical minefield, an environmental calamity, and a financial sinkhole.

1843 MAGAZINE SUMMER SPECIALS

How the Proud Boys are prepping for a second Trump term: These sad duncecaps watched Fight Club and never realized it’s satire.

How to get rich (Taylor’s version): Taylor Swift is exactly the kind of ruthless, cynical, conniving sociopath who generates disproportionate wealth in America.

Marwan Barghouti, the world’s most important prisoner: Some say Barghouti is the only man capable of negotiating a two-state solution. Others believe he’s a latent terrorist keen on fomenting violence. The only thing we know for sure is the Middle East is a goddamned mess.

Secrets of a ransomware negotiator: Ransomware attacks by hilariously bureaucratic hackers are on the rise. When you need to outfox the idiots holding your company hostage, you call Nick Shah (think Denzel Washington in Inside Man, but played by a middle-aged Indian dentist). A masterclass in negotiation techniques and funny as hell, this is the 2024 edition’s must-read article.

The cruise that will get you chased by the Chinese coastguard: Some people relax by the pool on vacation. Others chance capture by the Chinese government in the South China Sea. Takes all kinds, I guess.

BUSINESS

Green gold: POTUS 45 is promising a golden age for American oil companies, but this won’t happen because 1) oil and gas production increased during 2021-2024 vs. 2017-2020, 2) the Dow Jones Oil and Gas Index has doubled under Uncle Joe’s watch, 3) OPEC has far more influence over the global oil market than any U.S. President, 4) pressure from Wall Street investors has already shifted investment into renewable technologies, and 5) the all-knowing, all-seeing market wants long-term, environmentally friendly, and sustainable energy solutions.

Baidunked on: Baidu’s autonomous “robotaxies” are eating Tesla’s lunch, though the latter’s CEO didn’t notice because he was too busy being a transphobe on Twitter.

“Democratized” luxury: With Crazy Rich Asians spending less on luxury goods, Louis Vuitton splurged on Olympics sponsorships. Why? Because these days the high-end retailer makes much of its money duping plebes into believing they’re rich.

Idiotic incumbents: Airbus and Boeing have shat their dicks so egregiously in recent years they’re practically begging for a competitor to steal their market share. Unfortunately, only COMAC, China’s state-run aerospace champion, has deep enough pockets, and suspicious regulators and economic nationalism will hinder global market penetration. Every long-haul flight will thus remain an aerial version of Russian roulette.

AI apocalypse: Good news: Machines probably won’t destroy your job. Bad news: They’ll certainly make it more meaningless.

Open to interpretation: Mark Zuckerberg wants Meta’s artificial intelligence models to be “open source,” where “open source” means owned and controlled by Mark Zuckerberg.

FINANCE & ECONOMICS

Pyrrhic victory: Western xenophobes wish to deport millions of immigrants. Of course, this would force the “natives” to do some actual goddamned work — instead of posting racist memes on Telegram — and precipitate an economic apocalypse.

Kamala’s pops: Donald Harris, the VP’s eighty-five-year-old father, is a Jamaican-American, Marxist, anti-capitalist economist who used to teach at Stanford. Has anyone told Paul Beatty about this?

Unintended consequences: To juice the economy, and increase homeownership, Russian President Vladimir Putin singlehandedly created a housing bubble, debt crisis, and inflationary death spiral. Evil genius, indeed.

WWIII heating up: Last summer’s double-issue delivered a stark warning: When China starts stockpiling raw materials and commodities, expect World War III to hit a theater near you. China’s been aggressively stockpiling raw materials and commodities for months.

Election punting: Investors shouldn’t bet on election outcomes because they’re inherently unpredictable. For some reason, The Economist’s “Buttonwood” columnist doesn’t apply this logic to every other facet of life.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Sound idea: Ukraine’s military has pioneered new acoustic detection techniques to repel Russian aerial attacks.

Some actual good news!: AIDS is on the decline worldwide. Better still, the continued use of antiretrovirals and pre-exposure prophylactic (PrEP) drugs, coupled with novel research into possible cures, means the disease could be eradicated this century.

Gamified driving: Holographic heads-up displays (HUDs) will make driving more like playing Halo, and somehow this will make everyone safer. Apparently the engineers have never heard of road rage.

CULTURE

Mealy-mouthed memoirs: Re-reading The Art of the Deal and Hillbilly Elegy reveals their subjects were always destined to become craven, cynical, power-hungry shitbags.

Water is life: The Seine — chock full of industrial pollution and human waste, and used and abused for centuries by fishing boats and cargo barges — remains the beating heart of Paris.

Witch hunt: You can thank The Blair Witch Project, which turned twenty-five last month, for the constant stream of shitty, low-budget horror films polluting cinemas and streaming platforms.

OBITUARY

Nuclear annihilation: Thomas Neff, the physicist and humanitarian who facilitated Uranium exchanges between the U.S. and Russia, and helped repurpose over 20,000 Russian warheads into American energy, died on July 11th, aged 80.