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Comment by selectodude | Hacker News Reader

I love the Economist, but they're not "non-partisan". They're simply upfront about their bias.

“Non-partisan” is not the same thing as non-ideological.

This is a good point. Where the Economist is aligned with, say, the Tories, it's because they both support the same ideas, not because my-party-is-right. (Nowadays the Tories have shifted pretty damn far from those ideas, so it's more apparent that it's ideology that the Economist has, not a partisan affiliation.)

I think that’s the point, though. They have a biased worldview - they own that and highlight it regularly - but that bias doesn’t align with any American political party, and I don’t get the sense that it is particularly well aligned with existing parties in the UK either.

They're Lib-Dems.

But only by exclusion. The Economist speaks from a classical/neo liberal viewpoint. Civil liberties, free markets, laissez faire, technocracy. Labour is too statist for them, and the Conservatives are currently too populist (and incompetent). The Economist's position lines up pretty well with the Orange Book wing of the Lib-Dems [1], but much less well with the SDP / social liberal wing.

They have backed all three major parties in general elections in the last twenty years [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orange_Book:_Reclaiming_Li...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_editorial_stance...

Indeed. I think from the American point of view they seem to be so centered that it can fall both ways.

For the UK i see them clearly as hardcore liberal democrats.

I think that in the south Europe political landscape they would be orphaned as there even the center parties are not very economically liberal.

It's more than just being upfront about their bias. It's also the way they avoid descending into demonizing and name-calling. Even when discussing leaders of whom they clearly disapprove such as Recep Erdogan, Jair Bolsonaro, and Donald Trump, they don't come right out and declare them as "lunatics". Instead, they try to write dispassionate analysis which often drives readers to the conclusion that they are lunatics. This might seem a subtle distinction, but it is a marked departure from the shrill tone of many other media outfits.

I think you can be biased but also non-partisan. Partisan is usually referred to in terms of being an the side of a particular party. The Economist definitely has its bias, but that doesn't align clearly with either the right or the left in American politics.

democrat, republican and green are parties, not right and left, which represent an arbitrary dichotomization of a complex landscape otherwise irreducible without losing critical information. that kind of reductionism, i daresay, never leads to meaningful understanding, just loggerheads.

the economist takes a conventional stance of promoting policies that favor the already wealthy. that facet of it is rather banal and certainly not where the exciting ideas for the next millennia are going to emerge from.

It’s good point: right and left aren’t parties. Unfortunately it’s increasingly feeling that way in America; Independents (among which I count myself) don’t play a meaningful role and polarization as measured by congressional voting patterns seems to be the highest it’s been in decades.

I think it’s unfair to say they support policies that favor the already wealthy. Certainly they do sometimes, but they’ve opposed tax cuts, supported minimum wage increases, etc. I’m ready to be proven wrong but I haven’t got that impression when I read it.

> "I think it’s unfair to say they support policies that favor the already wealthy."

it's not unfair to call a spade a spade. opposing tax cuts can be done for a myriad of supportive or unsupportive reasons, so that doesn't provide a useful counter-argument.

and "minimum wage increases" sounds great on the surface. but the underlying purpose of a minimum wage is to paper over gross systemic equities that have only grown over time and keep us from even discussing policies for creating more fair and dynamic markets that would naturally distribute wealth more widely and efficiently, and neatly obviate such a distortion-producing bandaid of a policy.

but the central point is that no significant party and nearly no politician is addressing systemic issues that has promoted winner-take-all dynamics in our politicoeconomy for at least the last 50 years. even obamacare was so browbeaten and laden with special interest provisions, our healthcare costs have only soared, all to append zeroes onto bank accounts that abosolutely don't need, and more pointedly don't deserve, them.

> and "minimum wage increases" sounds great on the surface. but the underlying purpose of a minimum wage is to paper over gross systemic equities that have only grown over time and keep us from even discussing policies for creating more fair and dynamic markets that would naturally distribute wealth more widely and efficiently, and neatly obviate such a distortion-producing bandaid of a policy.

This is a made up problem that came from economists high on their own models. Empirical evidence shows that minimum wage increases in the US have almost none of the distorting effects they would supposedly have. The response from economists has been to make up new models that show it's okay actually, up to ~60% of median wage.

Some countries like the Nordics have high incomes despite no minimum wage (they have sectoral bargaining unions instead) but they should probably get one since it increases productivity a little. And Australia's federal minimum wage is still higher than any locality in the US and yet causes no problems.

> Empirical evidence shows

I imagine there is 'evidence' out there but the empirical claim is quite intriguing. Do you have any sources for this?

Some literature review here:

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-15-minimum-wage-is-pre...

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-minimum-wage-pushback

One thing that might disappoint people is that increasing minimum wage isn't the best way to reduce poverty in the US, for the simple reason that most poor people aren't wage laborers. And not unemployed either - they're children and the elderly. Child allowances seem like they'll be very effective here, unless you don't trust their parents to use it well.

Around these parts, you have to be yelling and calling people names to be considered "partisan." Subtlety is lost on us.

(Not /s, but also not not /s?)

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