The Economist - Opinions

Opinions

When the newsmagazine was founded, the term "economism" denoted what would today be termed "economic liberalism". The Economist generally supports, free trade, globalisation, and free immigration, legalised drugs and prostitution. It has been described as neo-liberal although occasionally accepting the propositions of Keynesian economics where deemed more "reasonable". The news magazine favours a carbon tax to fight global warming. According to former editor Bill Emmott, "the Economist's philosophy has always been liberal, not conservative." Individual contributors take diverse views. The Economist favours the support, via central banks, of banks and other important corporations. This principle can (in a much more limited form) be traced back to Walter Bagehot, the third editor of The Economist, who argued that the Bank of England should support major banks that got into difficulties.

The paper has also supported some socially liberal causes such as recognition of gay marriages, legalisation of drugs, and progressive taxation, criticising the U.S. tax model in a recent issue, and seems to support some government regulation on health issues, such as smoking in public, as well as bans on spanking children. The Economist consistently favours guest worker programs, parental choice of school, and amnesties and once published an "obituary" of God. The Economist also has a long record of supporting gun control.

The Economist has endorsed both the Labour Party (in 2005) and the Conservative Party (in 2010) at general election time in Britain, and both Republican and Democratic candidates in the United States. Economist.com puts its stance this way:

What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? "It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position." That is as true today as when former Economist editor Geoffrey Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. In foreign affairs it once, under Emmott's editorship declared itself openly "Americanophile", and it long supported the Americans in Vietnam, as it supported the later wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in their time it also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and it has long espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favouring penal reform and decolonisation, as well as—more recently—gun control and gay marriage.

The Economist frequently accuses figures and countries of corruption or dishonesty. In recent years, for example, it criticised former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz; Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister (who dubbed it The Ecommunist); Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the late president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Robert Mugabe, the head of government in Zimbabwe; and, recently, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the president of Argentina. The Economist also called for Bill Clinton's impeachment and later for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation after the emergence of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse. Though The Economist initially gave vigorous support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, it later called the operation "bungled from the start" and criticised the "almost criminal negligence" of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war, while maintaining, as of April 2008, that pulling out in the short term would be irresponsible. In the 2004 U.S. election, the editors "reluctantly" backed John Kerry. In the 2008 U.S. election the newsmagazine endorsed Barack Obama, while using the election eve issue's front cover to promote his candidacy. In the 2012 U.S. election, Barack Obama was again endorsed: the editorial said that they preferred Obama on the economy, foreign policy and health care, but criticised him for running a negative campaign against Romney and for a "poor appreciation of commerce".