I'd say this gets it about right, though I'm not quite this bullish on the Eastern Europe coverage which seems to me to have an awful of "LIBERALISE YOUR LABOUR MARKETS DAMNIT" stuff in it. Basically, you want to stay far away from any article that threatens to turn to the subject of pensions or labor market regulations.
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"How to Read the Economist"
16 Mar 2008 11:47 am
Comments (10)
At least let's all agree to read The Economist. The recommended slash-and-burn method works fine. And as far as I'm concerned, their coverage of the Former Evil Empire is up there with NYRB. Which is to say, better than Atlantic's, Matt. Fix that, okay?
Matt,
I'm a bit confused by your objection to The Economist's standard economic prescription for the developing world.
Don't you agree with it?
A week or so ago you argued that the United States had benefitted greatly from its own labor market liberalizations (and from deregulation mor generally). Is this (very good) advice somehow inapplicable to Eastern Europe? Or, for that matter, to Germany?
Should the Economist support protectionism, the labour theory of value, and government ownership of the means of production every few weeks just to break up the monotony?
Should you take a few days to support the Iraq war, just for variety's sake?
I look on The Economist's economic liberalism the same way I look on your Iraq war stance -- predictable and repetitive, but often accompanied by insight and fundamentally correct.
Heedless has a good point - as someone who habitually threads mechanical pushback into your analysis, you're hardly one to talk.
There are a lot of good things about the magazine, particularly much deeper coverage of parts of the world rarely touched by US-centric mags.
But, their current coverage of US politics is just plain stupid - about what you'd expect from a blowhard like Chris Matthews. On FISA and McCain/torture they've recently published stuff that shows they just don't know what they're talking about.
So I second the motion to skip the US section, except for the entertaining bits.
If a newspaper always advocates the same thing, it will of course be right part of the time. But it's not useful to read it, unless you want to know the advocacy for the point it's arguing.
I've read the Economist from to time to time. I wasn't particularly annoyed by it, but I wasn't entranced, either. I did like the science section.
The obituary alone makes the Economist worth the not-inconsiderable subscription price.
"which seems to me to have an awful of "LIBERALISE YOUR LABOUR MARKETS DAMNIT" stuff in it. "
That's downright poetic.
(I'm assuming there's a "lot" missing - although I rather like the term *jawful . . .)
"But it also serves as a kind of aspirational good. The Economist flatters readers who aren’t quite intelligent enough to realize how shallow it is into thinking that they are more intelligent than they are because they read it. Thus, we get articles like Friedman’s, which are less about the state of the US magazine market than about how Friedman and his friends are smart, unconventional and edgy because they read the appointed magazine for smart, unconventional and edgy people."
Right on.
Lampooning The Economist might be a form of flattery. However, as a devoted fan of both The Atlantic (former Monthly) and The Economist for almost two decades, I have to respect the fact, that The Economist makes money, and The Atlantic doesn't. MY should be humbler, unless his book goes viral and his good name rockets The Atlantic to awards and self-sufficiency.
Comments closed March 30, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Yeah man, my wife and I were paging through the Economist yesterday, and we were both like, "What the fuck is their issue with free markets?" It's like a weird nervous tic or something.
That said, my wife loves it, and even my mother seemed absorbed by it (my mother never reads the NY Times or any weekly magazine). I think the format is extremely accessible. It's also stuffed with content, like you mention.
In comparison I find Newsweek and Time relatively embarassing (e.g. could you ever imagine the Economist putting a big glossy photo of Hillary on the cover and writing "Fighter!" - they would puke on their thousand doller shoes before doing that).
Posted by Jonathan Dworkin | March 16, 2008 1:32 PM