The Economist has endorsed Barack Obama.
And I now no longer endorse The Economist.
Sorry, after what is approaching a 12 year love affair with The Economist, my formerly beautiful fair maiden has gotten incredibly fat and ugly and taken a sharp turn to the left as of recent. With a new chief editor I, along with many others, have noticed this deterioration, but this is just plain unacceptable.
How a formerly great publication such as The Economist, based on simple laws of economics and freedom, has now come to support Obama, a socialist (and let there be no if, and, or's or but's about it), shows how there is no longer any intellectual honest or integrity left at the "rag" and they've simply become another member of the Main Stream Media, posing as some kind of intellectually unique publication.
I am now to believe, that all the charts, data and empirical evidence it has furnished over the years were in error? Were faulted? And their opposition to the corporate tax was wrong all this time? Free markets are NOT the way to go? Unfortunately for The Economist web sites such as the OECD, FRED Database and others provide us the information needed to develop and create our own opinions, making The Economist obsolete.
Of course, no doubt The Economist will see it's readership go up. It has abandoned its niche market of intelligent, intellectually honest men and women desperately seeking truth, opting to instead woo the masses by telling them what they want to hear. And if you think about it, that's only befitting.
It's the exact same thing Obama is doing.
18 comments:
Amen, Capitalist Comrad. I'm ditching my subscription, too. Any rag calling itself "The Economist" should have on its staff at least one person with the knowledge of what creates and sustains economies.
By canceling, we're helping them understand Capitalism.
Of course, no doubt The Economist will see it's readership go up.
I don't think so. Most leftists will never read The Economist because they fear numbers and reality (that's also what you say all the time).
Of course, they make their European readers very happy with this decision, since even conservative Europeans are dumb enough to vote for Obama. But half of the readers of this magazine live in the USA. By endorsing Obama, The Economist has simply canceled a quarter of its subsciptions.
Now they will get their chance to experience the force of the invisible hand.
Heh. I have read the economist for a couple decades. A rare treat. Something to savor, relish, I would get giddy just contemplating the prospect.
However I noticed about 2 years ago things seemed not quite right.
Sad really. Very very sad.
"Of course, no doubt The Economist will see it's readership go up."
Print media in general has been supporting "The Messiah" and have seen numbers subscrips drop. NYT stock is now in the junk category.
Perhaps the Econ wants to rapidly lose income before "the One" comes in and takes it all.
Have you noticed the same horrible trend with the Wall Street Journal? I've been subscribing continuously since 1981, and I've watched it's start into collectivist disintegration for the past 10 years. The increasingly biased slanting of their formerly objective reporting has sharply accelerated in the past five years, and in the past year it has become a rag at the verge of being worthless.
The only problem is that I don't know of another dead-tree national news source that's any better.
hey cap'n
whatcha gonna do now that you're a socialist, too? for when living in a socialist nation, you are a socialist citizen.
i think you ought to just rename yourself and your blog, Kaptain Kapitalist!
from an ardent RSS subscriber,
in santa fe
I decided that the Economist had left leaning at least 15 years ago judging from the rhetoric used in articles, much like Fortune Magazine.
I'd cancel my subscription except I don't have one.
That said, so we now have newspapers (and TV news - NBC for example) abandoning hard analysis and the seeking of truth for telling people what they want to hear for economic reasons.
That works so well for the StarTribune - NOT!
The last two years we have had a complete failure of the news media - total abdication of their role in our democracy.
The question is 30 years from now will we still have a republic with the freedom that would allow us to look back and note this as the most serious failure in our nation's history.
I can deal with the Obama endorsement. That was expected.
More disappointing was citing a whole series of non-economic criteria for their selection. His middle name is a reason to vote for him? Really?. Certainly the Economist knows any endorsement will be cited on economic grounds and that should have been the sole criteria for their endorsement.
Most disappointing of all, though, was their clinging to the belief that what we really need is more stimulus. Well, stimulus and a stylish Obama saying "Open your mouth and close your eyes".
CapCap, I don't see a "contact me" link on your page anywhere. Do you suppose you'd be so kind as to explain the basic difference between Austrian economic thought and other kinds. You do such a fine job of explaining crap that others seem to really like to complicate.
And if you're really feeling generous, perhaps you could explain the whole bailout/credit crunch/coming economic reckoning from those different viewpoints?
You rock, CapCap! Thanks for all you do.
Reading The Economist lately made me want to spit. If they want to talk about Obama so much, why don't they start talking about what happens when you impose a price floor above the market level? Specifically, raising the minimum wage to over $9 an hour and then indexing it to inflation which is going to accelerate even more, now that the Fed's dropped the fed funds rate to the floor.
Obama's going to win, and all I'm going to get out of it is conclusive empirical evidence that minimum wage causes unemployment. Whoopie, I guess.
blackwing1, you sure about the Wall Street Journal? That publication seems to be strictly capitalist and Republican from what I can see.
Also, what do you all think that Princeton economist Paul Krugman, who writes for the New York Times, who believes strictly in big government and high taxes, who has also been accused of manipulating data to suit his own views, and of being incredibly partisan, just won the Nobel Prize in Economics (!?!).
Capt'n, I've been reading your blog for a few years, now. I've always wanted to subscribe to the Economist because of your speaking so highly of it. There is no way I could justify the expense, so I would occasionally pick up a copy at the book store and peruse it. I could not believe that my beloved Captain would ask me to read such drivel, and thought, "Lo, I must not be smart enough to understand..."
I am glad to see that it is not I that didn't get it, but the Economist itself, that doesn't get it.
Sad.
Over the last 6 weeks, I was wondering if the name of the magazine was "The Socialist." Their opinion pieces regarding the state of the US economy and the economics underlying had nothing to do with hard analysis, but seemed to push forward UK socialism. This piece just cements the mold.
I'll call them up and cancel my subscription after I get my print copy on monday.
I'm guessing they're also going to come out in favor of the Corn Laws now.
(one of the first stands they took when they started over a century ago was to take a stand against them)
Although they might have the intention of broadening their audience, I think it will backfire on them.
The only reason Air America has any listeners at all is because of the automatic station search on modern radios.
The New York Crimes, Washington Toast, San Francisco Chronic Ailment, and LA Whines are all dropping in circulation.
CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN are all suffering from viewer malaise.
If The Economist becomes just another voice in the leftist cacophany, they'll be lost in the din.
As The Economist said:
"Somehow Ronald Reagan’s party of western individualism and limited government has ended up not just increasing the size of the state but turning it into a tool of southern-fried moralism."
Evidently the GOP did not learn from its Congressional losses. They will have to lose the White House before they stop being into big government.
yeah...I let my subscription lapse. I won't be renewing it. Same thing happened with the once great Scientific American. A few years back they took a sharp turn to the left (from what was rather neutral or only mildly left) and included a lot more social "science." When they threatened to sue Bjorn for copyright infringement when he continued a discussion on his personal site -- that was the last straw. *sigh*
Post a Comment