🤖 The Age of AI and the 2024 (and 2028 ... and 2032) election

A tech-powered economic boom could lead to long-term political dominance by this year's presidential winner and their party

ITEM: Donald Trump has promised that the 2024 presidential election will bring “a brand new Trump economic boom” if he wins or a “1929-style depression” if he loses. In an hour-long speech focused on the economy in Asheville, North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump promised to bring down the price of cars, housing, insurance, and prescription drugs — and bashed the Biden administration for overseeing a rise in consumer prices. … “If Harris wins this election, the result will be a Kamala economic crash, a 1929-style depression . . . When I win the election, we will immediately begin a brand-new Trump economic boom,” he added. Trump promised to continue his 2017 tax cuts and vowed the US would “pay off our debt”. Financial Times, August 15, 2024

It was common back in late 2008 to wonder whether the next American president would be inheriting a “poisoned chalice.” With banks going bust and home prices collapsing, the US economy was already mired in a deep recession that threatened to get far worse. Whether the next man to sit in the Oval Office was John McCain or Barack Obama, his domestic policy agenda was already predetermined: doing whatever possible to keep the deep downturn from turning into a Second Great Depression.