01
As it is
The figure itself, on its own scale. The right reading when the units mean something to you: a policy rate, a debt ratio, a life expectancy.
Reference
Two hundred and seventy eight ways to read the world
Seventy one fields, each readable five ways, plus thirty eight overlays that stack on top of any of them. None of the five readings is a new dataset: they are the same numbers asked a different question.
The weather field
Weather you can see
Conditions over every capital the model carries, read as a surface: warm and cold air as a field, the wind as arrows scaled by speed, rain as rings. The same readings are a strip of the whole planet from coldest to hottest on the desk, and a row per capital with a three day outlook.
The atlas
Names, when you want them
Country names are off by default, because a map that talks over itself cannot be read. When they are on they are drawn as an atlas draws them: ranked by size, tracked, haloed against the ground, the small countries falling back to their codes, and faded toward the limb of the globe.
The five readings
02
Ranked
Position among all 238, one being the highest. The right reading when the spread is extreme enough that a colour scale collapses, which is what happens to income per head and to output.
03
Against the world median
The country divided by the median country. One is exactly typical, two is twice typical, a half is half. The right reading for asking who is unusual rather than who is large.
04
Against its own region
The same ratio, but against the median of its own region. This is the one that finds a country doing badly in a rich neighbourhood or well in a poor one, which a world comparison hides.
05
Change since today
The difference between the year on the timeline and the base year. The only one of the five that is about the simulation rather than about the world, and it is marked as such.
The forty seven fields
Each of these can be read all five ways.
Economy
14GrowthpercentReal output growth in the median future.
Output vs todayindex, 100 at the base yearCompounded across the whole run.
InflationpercentBuilt as a sum of named terms rather than solved and decomposed afterwards.
UnemploymentpercentOkun’s law with an explicit automation displacement term.
Public debtpercent of outputDebt dynamics with a risk premium that rises with the stock.
Output gappercentWhat is left when the supply side terms are taken out of growth.
CurrencyindexMean reverting, responding to rate differentials and risk.
Risk premiumpointsRises with debt, sanctions, conflict and world stress.
Policy ratepercentA Taylor rule, which a lever can push off.
Exportspercent of outputHow much of an economy leaves it, and therefore how fast a trade shock arrives.
Agriculture sharepercent of output
Industry sharepercent of output
Services sharepercent of output
Income per headdollarsOn a log scale, because the range is four orders of magnitude.
People
9Populationmillions
Net migrationpercent a yearDriven by income gaps and by stress, not assumed.
Emigration pressureindexUnemployment, conflict, stability, heat, food and water.
Median ageyears
Life expectancyyears
Urbanisationpercent
Births per womanchildrenWith the twenty year lag to the labour force.
Population growthpercent a year
Densitypeople per square kilometreThe one figure computed rather than stored, from population and land area.
Stability and security
6Political stabilityindex
TensionindexBetween blocs, and modelled rather than observed.
Governanceindex
Military spendingpercent of output
Nuclear weaponsyes or no
AlignmentblocCategorical, so it is drawn as a wash rather than a ramp.
Capability
5AI capabilityindexSpreads at the speed a country can absorb it, not at the speed it is invented.
Connectivitypercent
Research spendpercent of output
Fab capacityindexA fab takes four years to build, which is why a chip shock hurts.
Input shortfallshareWhat an importer cannot reach, as a hard constraint rather than a price.
Resources
9Renewable sharepercent
Emissions per headtonnes
Water stressindexWhat turns a dry year into a food problem and then into a migration problem.
Energy dependenceshareNegative for a net exporter, which is why it uses a two ended ramp.
Food self sufficiencyratio
Oil productionmillion barrels a day
Energy useindex
Energy producedindex
Land areasquare kilometres
Indices, computed here
4Instability indexof 100Stability, tension, unemployment, inflation, sovereign risk, the youth weight and water stress, weighted.
Resilience rankingof 100Income, governance, food, energy, fiscal headroom, diversity of output and connectivity. Not the same as wealth.
Chokepoint exposureof 100How much of a country’s position depends on a strait staying open.
Scored hotspotof 100Instability multiplied by how much the rest of the world would feel it.
Every index shows its own arithmetic
An index is a claim dressed as a number, so the only honest way to ship one is to say exactly what went into it and with what weight, let anyone read it, and recompute it from the run on screen rather than storing a figure somebody arrived at somewhere else. Open a country on any of the four and it lists every term, its weight, and how many points it contributed.
The bands that normalise each term are judgement. They are visible judgement, written in the source where anyone can argue with them.
The overlays are on the map page
Thirty of them, from boundaries and places to cables, satellites and live feeds.
The map