A VICE president is currently running for president of the world's most powerful democracy. That democracy, the United States, also happens to be the world's biggest economy: its gross domestic product was worth more than $27 trillion in 2023 (we never breached $500 billion, to emphasize the immensity of American productivity). What is amazing about US Vice President Kamala Harris is this: in an age of brutal, take-no-prisoner politics, she speaks as though from an earlier era when civility and polite language dominated political discourse.

In her campaign, she speaks of a 'new way forward,' which simply means repudiating the polarizing politics of America and, with the attendant call for unity, a call to end the politics of bitter division, hate and strife. The economic anchor of that way forward is, in her own words, ushering in what she calls an 'opportunity economy' that, on the macro level, would spur innovation and, on the micro level, lower the cost of housing and consumer goods.