[jazzyk]

Please read carefully.

The Agnelli family owns 43.4%, members of the Rothschild family own 21%, other big corporate/rich families interests own the rest. Lots of "Sirs", "Ladies" and "Baronesses" on the board of directors, as you can see below.

From the Wikipedia page:

Pearson PLC held a 50% shareholding via The Financial Times Limited until August 2015; at that time Pearson sold their share in the Economist. The Agnelli family's Exor paid £287m to raise their stake from 4.7% to 43.4%, while the Economist paid £182m for the balance of 5.04m shares which will be distributed to current shareholders.[2] Aside from the Agnelli family, smaller shareholders in the company include Cadbury, Rothschild (21%), Schroder, Layton and other family interests as well as a number of staff and former staff shareholders.[2][3]

The current members of the board of directors of The Economist Group are: Rupert Pennant-Rea (Chairman), Zanny Minton Beddoes (editor-in-chief of The Economist), Lady Suzanne Heywood, Brent Hoberman, Sir David Bell, John Elkann, Alex Karp, Sir Simon Robertson, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Chris Stibbs and Baroness Jowell.[12]

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild publicly supports many politicians including Hillary Clinton.

[sanderjd]

Isn't your thesis that this situation changed in 2015? I don't know for sure, but I always assumed the Economist has always been run by a bunch of Sirs and Ladies... I have read and quite liked the magazine for a couple decades and they have seemed consistently elitist, pro-market, and globalist during that time. It is something I like, that they have a strong identifiable editorial perspective, unlike newspapers that have some claim to neutrality, which mostly makes their biases harder to delineate and more arguable.

[jazzyk]

Whether it is the Sirs/Ladies, or the Elkanns or the Rothschilds, they are interested in continuing the current status quo, enriching the 1% that they belong to, at the cost of everyone else.

The Economist used to be pro-small-business free market. At some point they started justifying outsourcing as "free trade", which benefited big companies like Apple, etc. and stagnated or starved small businesses (and the productivity/innovation that comes from it), not to mention labor providers (even highly educated ones, such as software engineers :-))

This has proven to be quite bad for the US and Europe (except the 1%, whose interests The Economist represents through ownership) - and it may get even worse when money-printing will stop working at some point.

[sanderjd]

You are missing my point: this has always been their editorial stance. It may have always been a reason not to read them if you're not into it, but it's not a new reason.

[jazzyk]

As I mentioned I had been a subscriber for 30 years.

And no, I am not missing your point. There was a clear change in direction a few years ago - as I mentioned, I sensed it, but was not aware of the ownership change at the time.

You either did not notice or you just started reading them - good for you. Enjoy.

[sanderjd]

You may be right, but I don't see it. I have been reading since about 2005 and I don't recall seeing a strong stance against outsourcing at any point in that time. It would have struck me as surprising if I had, since they are broadly in favor of free trade, and outsourcing clearly fits the bill (even if you put it in scare quotes).

I don't really disagree with you about any of the points you're making, which means I often or usually don't agree with the Economist on these points, I just think it's a weird critique of the Economist to accuse them of being globalist, free trade, neoliberals; to me it's like, yeah, they are the Economist... It seems like accusing Jacobin of being socialist.

Maybe this change happened before 2005? I'd be interested in seeing some receipts. Are there some anti-outsourcing articles from way back that I've missed?