The Economist | 
| Publisher: The Economist Newspaper Group, Inc.
List Price: $356.49
Buy New: $119.00
You Save: $237.49 (67%)
Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 61
Format: Magazine Subscription
Type: Consumer magazine
Subscription Issues: 51
Subscription Length: 12 Months
Issues Per Year: 51
First Issue Lead Time: 4-6 Weeks
ASIN: B00077B7M6
Release Date: November 23, 2001
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 4 to 6 weeks
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Product Description
The Economist is a global weekly magazine written for those who share an uncommon interest in being well and broadly informed. Each issue explores domestic and international issues, business, finance, current affairs, science, technology and the arts. Your paid subscription to The Economist also includes unlimited access to Economist.com and our searchable archive.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
 A very different weekly news magazine June 2, 2007
L. F. Smith (E. Wenatchee, WA)
124 out of 126 found this review helpful
Reading The Economist is a very different experience from that of reading the "big three"-- Time, Newsweek, and US News-- for two reasons.
First, it's a British publication, written in a very British manner. It's tone can vary from flatly dry to dryly ironic to jarringly blunt. There's nothing here that one can call politically correct; the authors and editors call 'em as they see 'em.
Second, it's a serious news magazine. Each issue is packed with stories about current affairs, politics, economics, and business. There are also book and movie reviews. However, there is almost no pop culture news and absolutely none of the celebrity gossip that has begun to corrupt the "big three."
It's important to understand that reading The Economist takes some commitment of time and effort, probably at least two or three hours an issue. Every article is deeply analytical, and many stories are revisited weekly for updates. This is a NEWS magazine, not a news MAGAZINE, if that makes sense.
The issue of political bias always arises with the media. The Economist takes definite stands on nearly every issue, and those editorial stands are clearly stated and defended. However, it is at the same time scrupulously fair and balanced. That's quite a trick, but the staff pulls it off week after week.
So, if you're ready and willing to spend some time reading thoughtful, thought-provoking, in-depth analysis of the news of the world, you won't find a better news magazine than The Economist.
(You might want to buy a copy on a magazine rack somewhere and check the subscription offers on the insert cards. They're almost certain to be better than the Amazon price.)
 Too much of one ideology instead of various views on economics, news, and business July 31, 2007
Eric D. Rankin (Iowa United States)
66 out of 126 found this review helpful
I know that this review is probably going to be rated as not being helpful. However, I think it is important to plainly state my view.
I have really enjoyed The Economist whenever I bought it at a newstand or picked it out of the flight selections. So, I finally went ahead and purchased a subscription. At first I enjoyed the intellectual exercise of looking at world events from fresh points of view, however, after reading several issues I began to see a dissapointingly consistent bias.
I think the reviewers that note that the magazine is "fair and balanced" are guilty of wishful thinking. The "world view" of the writers can accurately be described as "secular humanist".
It began to bother me that the magazine tries to make it appear that they are untethered from bias and prejudice. Every author (or human being for that matter) has a world view shaped by life experience, educational influences, and ideology. It is absurd and disingenuous to say that we are above our individual biases, and that our thoughts do not come from a particular viewpoint. I began to want to know who wrote the individual articles, so that I could avoid the articles by authors that I found to be so biased that they were boorish.
Ultimately I enjoy some aspects of the magazine, just as one would enjoy an unusual dinner guest. But people begin to get tired of a interesting dinner guest that overstays their welcome.
The Economist is good for a read once in a while unless you share their ideology enough to withstand the consistent push of the secular humanist world view.
Very Disappointing Magazine for Conservatives February 21, 2007
Chris (Montreal, QC)
52 out of 135 found this review helpful
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.
Great magazine but don't order via Amazon May 9, 2007
Goldengate (San Francisco, where else?)
52 out of 61 found this review helpful
Great magazine. Enough said.
But Amazon uses a fulfillment house called "Synapse" and once you click on "Place Order", Amazon wipes their hands of any issues you might have and you're transferred to Synapse, who is completely incompetent. I keep forgetting this and have entered 3 magazine subscriptions... each one there have been issues, and when I email them, no response. When I call them, I'm transferred to another country and the person is just reading a script from the screen without really understanding why I'm calling.
Get the magazine - but not from Amazon!
Absolutely Brilliant! As "fair and balanced" news as you're gonna get these days! February 23, 2007
Greling C. Jackson Jr. (Atlanta)
50 out of 63 found this review helpful
Those on the far-left cry of its "callous conservatism" and those of the far-right call it a "bastion of ivy tower liberalism", but for your average American, this is what commonsense journalistic reporting should be: well-written, researched, for a somewhat educated but not strictly academic audience, and simply about the facts. You'll find articles written from nearly every political perspective here, but the most common take on the issues is a moderate one, usually just slightly left-of-center or right-of-center.
The Economist keeps up with the world's current trends and uniquely puts them into the context of a economic and political landscape. Despite the magazine's title, you don't really have to be an economist to understand or enjoy reading it. Give it to your teenagers and watch how smart and aware they become come time for them to take their SATs.
One review cried that The Economist is "statist". Hardly so! Sure, it's not as hard-nosed classicially liberal as some would like it to be in that it recognizes the immorality of obscene wealth concentration in the hands of a few while the overwhelming majority suffer. But, this is not hand-from-top Keynesian economics. Rather, it's called having a heart. Or rather, in more technical terms, it is what John Rawls, political philosopher and former Harvard University law professor, referred to as the "distributive justice" when he wrote the famed scholarly works "A Theory of Justice" and "Justice As Fairness". Rawls is a new classical liberal, but not a classical or neo-classical one. It was he, not Keynes, who invented this idea of "reflective equilibrium". He recognizes that even Adam Smith himself conceded that his model was imperfect and could lead to hegemony and market failure given the right conditions. Rawls does not believe in forced redistribution of wealth like statists do, but he say that an unequal distribution in a configuration that it works against the allowing of equal opportunity to flourish for the least advantaged is the very definition of injustice in a free society.
What the free-market fundamentalists fail to understand is that America changed after the Great Depression. The old glory days of freely raping and pillaging the earth without consequence are over. We now live in a world of over 6 billion people and limited resource. We are in this together. Sure, we should allow people to make their own economic decisions, as destroying their incentive would accomplish little in matters of improving the overall economic status of society in general. But, those of us who live in extreme opulence must come to eventually acknowledge that while one might choose to own ten limousines and a gold-plated toilet seat (and that is your freedom), such cannot be seen as moral when innocent children are born into starvation everyday through no choosing of their own. To say such is not so much Marxist or "leftist" as it is being a genuine human being with a sense of true compassion and justice for the whole of humanity.
So, in having 'The Economist' embrace the new school of Western liberalism, one should be glad. The older school of Classical Liberalism in the end points us to an absurd form of moral relativism and self-interested utilitarianism, where it's "dog eat dog" and everyone who gets eaten goes to hell. It leads to a perversely selfish style of individualism and pride ego that even to this day remains one of the most harshest critiques made against modern liberalism. Hardly anything a true conservative would embrace... A moral one, that is.
Don't read The Economist if you think Marx killed God or Milton Friedman was God. Rather, read The Economist if you if think Thomas Paine in "Common Sense" said it all when he said:
"Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil."
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