Nearly four years ago, I bought a two-year subscription to The Economist. This newspaper-magazine is supposed to be the most serious and highbrow analysis of the previous week’s events, aimed specifically at the university-graduate market (unlike the popular weeklies such as Time, Newsweek, etc.) Yet unfortunately, this magazine has proved extremely disappointing to me.

The Economist has a reputation of being a ‘kinda’ right-wing, but mostly centrist magazine (endorsing Bill Clinton in 92 and 96 but George W. Bush in 2000 rather than a leftish populist like Al Gore, while going back to endorsing John Kerry in 2004) that can be counted on for being very pro-capitalistic no matter what.

The other negative reviewers think this magazine is a ‘rightist’ magazine purely because The Economist strongly supports a form of globalization: globalization being the great bogey-man of the anti-capitalist left. I am going to show you why The Economist is not only not a conservative magazine, but is essentially a mouthpiece for the morality and economics of the Left. In other words, this magazine is not only leftist according to John-Birchers (not hard), but it is leftist even according the Republican party.

The Economist makes no pretentions of value-neutrality in its reporting (which is good, I don’t believe there can be such a thing, so why hide it?) so what you get is very editorialized lead articles, subsection articles (which form the bulk of the magazine), and book reviews; all pervaded with the values of the Economist’s reporting staff.

This magazine is quite open about the social and political positions it adopts, unlike say the New York Times and the Washington Post (officially unbiased and neutral, but unofficially the epitome of left-liberal), so you better make sure your values and ideas about your country and society coincide with the staff of the Economist before you invest a penny in a subscription.

As to The Economist’s view of moral questions, The Economist is the very embodiment of anti-conservative bias and prejudice. It is extremely secular humanist in its general view of the world; it supports abortion on demand for all nine months of pregnancy as a basic right for women; it supports widespread contraceptive use and population ‘control’ (euphemism) measures in Asia and Africa; stem-cell research on aborted fetuses and fetuses intentionally grown; it advocates legalized prostitution and the moral indifference of sexual promiscuity; they believe the best way to stop Africa AIDS is to flood Africa with condoms; they insist homosexuality is perfectly natural and normal and possibly morally superior (any deviation from that party-line is homophobia, a word they like to throw around–a lot) and are loudly in favor of the civil recognition of homosexual unions as authentic marriages; they opposes the death penalty for murderers and rapists; endorse easy-divorce laws; defend compulsory taxpayer-financed schooling; Milton Friedman-style school vouchers; show anxiety and enmity towards America’s homeschooling phenomena; strongly defends socialist national health care systems(!!!); university educations that are mostly socialist (and that education is a right the state must provide at socialized collective expense); big strong governments (i.e. governments involved with economic central planning); big strong standing militaries and interventionist foreign policies in search of foreign monsters to slay; pro-Iraq War; supra-national governmental agencies like the U.N., N.A.F.T.A. and the International Court of Justice which trump national congresses or parliaments; is a hard-core supporter of religious pluralism and always defends the view that the central tenants of traditional Christianity are absolutely false and the tenants of secular humanism true (which I guess is nice if you are a secular humanist).

‘Fundamentalists’ in the US (translation: adherents of pre-1920s style Christianity), admittedly an eccentric and varied group, both amuse and scare the writers of the Economist and they are often the subject of editorials in the American section, ones that paint them mercilessly in negative terms. The writers have great difficulty mentioning Christians who haven’t gutted their beliefs with theological liberalism without using the word ‘zealot’ (check for it, ‘zealot’ and ‘Christian’ appear together as often as ‘conspiracy’ and ‘theory’) and delicately though straight-forwardly hinting that bible-believers are dangerous simpletons who are also bigots. The Economist argues that Fundamentalists dominate the Republican party, to the Republican party’s great shame. Does any of this sound very conservative to you?

As to its view of political economy or economics, the staff of the magazine has their good points. They oppose and lampoon outright leftist protectionist boondoggles like France’s “industrial champion” policy and Britain’s former policy of “picking winners”. They dislike erecting tariff-barriers in the face of outsourcing or alleged foreign ‘dumping’, and are pretty good at mocking various featherbedding rules. The Economist is always a friend to the inescapable logic of Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage; a foe to protectionism of all (i.e. most) stripes and flavours. Great! But unfortunately… the Economist also has a lot of problems with its economic prescriptions.

The magazine has writers on it who demonstrate various economic tendencies: Keynesians, Chicagoites, Historicists, and other positivists. The common thread is statist-economics. Nixon said in the seventies that we’re all Keynesians now, and the description continues to aptly fit The Economist. It is solidly neo-classical as opposed to new classical. It is relentlessly in favour of so-called counter-cyclical action by every nation’s Central Bank. It views business cycles as an inevitable defect of the capitalist system which has absolutely proven the necessity of the welfare state. It insists monetary policy (inflate the money supply!) and fiscal policy (deficit spending!) are the right recipes for the welfare state to ’smooth out’ the bumps of the business cycle, and I guess as Keynes said, “save capitalism from itself.” They argue the Great Depression of the 1930s ‘proved’ the folly of laissez-faire capitalism and the requirement of a “third way” that mixes the alleged best features of socialism with the best features of capitalism while supposedly avoiding the worst of both (a.k.a. the Keynesian “revolution” in economics). They fully reject the gold monetary standard and embrace on principle fractional reserve banking, central banking and fiat money as alone desirable. They are hard-core defenders of the welfare-state, and a large activistic government. The Economist pokes fun at Germany and Japan’s moribund economies and sclerotic labour markets, but you know that as Keynesians & Chicagoites all they really want for these two countries is for them to operate more like the U.S.A.’s government, so the criticisms are pretty tame since of course the U.S. government is huge, and keeps on growing.

Prospective conservative subscribers should be growing apprehensive by this point, I hope.

Where once the classical and neo-classical (pre-Keynesian) schools proclaimed the value of laissez-faire and a market free from state intervention, today’s mainstream (post-Keynesian/general equilibrium) economists maddeningly find more and more justifications for the state to be getting involved due to all sorts of putative market failures. Unquestionably, the economic and finacial advice this magazine provides is far from what the laissez-faire economists of the classical/early-neoclassical (Smith, Ricardo, Say, Mill, Jevons) and Austrian (Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Von Mises, Rothbard) schools taught. I find that utterly annoying and grating. While still controversial to suggest it, I think the entire economics profession has shifted to the left over the last century. At any rate: the Economist is squarely mainstream Ivy League statist economic orthodoxy. If you are the sort of person who thinks abolishing the income tax might be a good idea, you are already way, way too far to the right for this magazine, you crazy nut-case.

Something an economics-literate person might ask themselves is do they believe FDR’s New Deal shortened or prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930’s? If they think shortened, then the Economist might be for them, and it will try to reinforce that belief. But if you are a conservative and suspect the creation of the welfare state might not have been very good, then the Economist will just grate on you, week after week, since it will tell you it was VERY good.

I let my subscription to the Economist expire without renewing. So much for that experiment. Please don’t make the same mistake I made in thinking this was a conservative magazine.
Rating: 1 / 5