The fortunes of the US economy have surprisingly little to do with whoever wins the election

There are good reasons to expect that the US economy will do rather well during the next decade, whether Trump or Biden is elected in November, writes Hamish McRae

Joe Biden has promised an increase in corporation tax (AP)

Three weeks to go in the US election and there’s an apparently widening gap. So what would a Biden victory do to the economy?

Here is a message of hope, but with a twist. There are good reasons to expect that the US economy will do rather well during the next decade, in particular lifting the living standards of the middle class. But, and here’s the twist, that will not have much to do with whoever wins the election.

It is easy to see what has gone wrong with the US economy over the past few years: a long boom, yes, but one whose benefits have been unequally shared. The tech billionaires have become ever richer, while people on middle incomes have seen their living standards stagnate. Job numbers have risen but so too has insecurity, while many people at the bottom of the income and wealth scales have sadly gone backwards. Donald Trump sought to reverse these trends, to rebuild middle America, but the reality is that the pattern has intensified. Inequality has risen, with the pandemic seeing a surge in the fortunes of the billionaires at the very time that unemployment has hit those on low incomes hardest.