1991.10.16 《殖民主义的经济学》，关于《经济学人》杂志

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TECHNOLOGY
"The Economics of the Colonial Cringe," about The Economist magazine; Washington Post, 1991
By James Fallows
OCTOBER 16, 1991
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The Economics of the Colonial Cringe: Pseudonomics and the Sneer on the Face of The Economist.

By James Fallows; Washington Post "Outlook"section; October 6, 1991.

Last summer, a government man who helps make international economic policy told me (with a thoughtful expression) he was reading "quite an interesting new book" about the stunning economic rise of East Asia. "The intriguing thing is, it shows that market forces really were the explanation!" he exclaimed in delight. "Industrial policies and government tinkering didn't matter that much."

By chance, I had just read the very book -- Governing the Market by Robert Wade. This detailed study, citing heaps of evidence, had in fact concluded nearly the opposite: that East Asian governments had tinkered plenty, directly benefiting industry far beyond anything "market forces" could have done.

I knew something else about the book: The Economist magazine had just reviewed it and mischaracterized its message almost exactly the way the government official had.

Had he actually read the book? Maybe, but somehow I have my doubts.

What I saw that day, I suspect, was just another illustration of the power of Washington's current Sacred Cow: The Economist magazine, which each week unwholesomely purveys smarty-pants English attitudes on our shores.

Like other sacred cows, The Economist obviously has its virtues. Compared to any of the American newsmagazines, The Economist gets by with a skeleton staff of mainly young writers, who turn out a prodigious amount of copy each week. The news stories have lots of informative tidbits, and the "leaders," or editorials, in the front of the magazine often take up usefully quirky subjects. My recent favorite is one explaining why the rise of English as an international language is a short-term convenience but a long-term disaster for Americans and Englishmen. The Koreans, Russians, Japanese and even Dutch can listen in on what we're saying. We have no private language to scheme in, as they do.

But what signifies a sacred cow is that people revere it for fashionable reasons, and out of all proportion to its real strengths and weaknesses. The Economist, whose American circulation has risen from 40,000 to 183,000 over the last 10 years, seems to have reached that point among America's professional class.

For example: Several weeks ago, The New York Times Magazine ran a profile of Bill Gates, the "boy billionaire" founder of Microsoft. Here is someone with many good reasons to be vain, but the main vanity he seemed to push in the article was his association with The Economist. (Gates said that he didn't have a TV in his house, because if he had one he'd never have time to read The Economist cover to cover, "as I do now.")

As part of a feud with Newsweek's Robert Samuelson, Robert Reich, of Harvard, wrote a letter-to-the-editor that said: "I, for one, don't get my economics news from Newsweek. I rely on The Economist -- published in London." Humphrey Greddon wrote of this episode in Spy: "If so, then Reich resembles many semipretentious undergraduates, bankers and newsmagazine business writers in this country. The omniscient tone and pedantry of The Economist must impress the insecure American cousins in its readership." [2006 Update: I was then in the middle of my own little squabble with Reich, long forgotten on both sides -- I think!]

In functional terms, The Economist is more like the Wall Street Journal than like any other American publication. In each there's a kind of war going on between the news articles and the editorial pages. The news articles are not overly biased and try to convey the complex reality of, well, the news. Meanwhile, the editorials and "leaders" push a consistent line, often at odds with the facts reported on the news pages of the same issue.

For The Economist, the tension is most obvious in its coverage of Japan. According to the editorial line, Japan is becoming more and more market-minded, its trade surplus is bound to disappear, its economic mandarins are losing power by the minute and its people are about to revolt against the onerous 'salaryman' life. Meanwhile the news stories point out that things aren't evolving quite according to editorial plan. [Update: Japan's financial markets and real estate were headed for problems right about then. But its exports and trade surplus have kept chugging right along, and its mandarins and salarymen have essentially retained their same roles.]

To give one example from several hundred possibilities, last year The Economist's correspondent in Tokyo detailed the Japanese government's plan to keep foreign companies from selling advanced "amorphous metals" to Japanese customers, until Japanese firms could gear up to make the products on their own. A few pages later in the same issue, a book review announced, with great confidence but without noticeable evidence, that Asia's "stunning growth was built on efficient investment and innovation, which in turn owed everything to openness to trade."

More recently, an Economist article pointed out that Japan's trade surplus is on the rise with nearly all its partners. Its conclusion was not that the magazine should revise its theories but that readers should prepare for "whining" (translation from the British "whingeing") from the small-minded protectionists in the rest of the world.

The editorial line pushed by The Economist is also functionally similar to the Journal's. Markets nearly always work, and government meddling nearly always fails. If some fact seems not to fit this schema -- for instance, the success of Asian governments in meddling with their economies -- the fact should be harumphed out of the way. [Updated example: China.] Political leaders must above all be firm, like the Divine Mrs. T. Writers and thinkers should above all be "clever," The Economist's highest term of praise. (The Journal's counterpart is "realistic.") Those who disagree are to be mocked -- as sissies by the Journal and dim bulbs by The Economist. The world should be viewed, from above, with a pitying amusement. Why can't they be as clever as we?

The real question about this editorial approach is why it's paid off better for The Economist than for the Journal. Why is it impossible to imagine a professor boasting in print, "I rely on the Wall Street Journal -- published in New York"? Why do people apparently buy the Journal (or The Washington Post or the New York Times) only if they want actually to read it -- rather than just to carry it around, as a suspiciously large number of Economist "readers" seem to do?

The roots of the explanation stretch back to 1776 and America's incomplete separation from the motherland. England is a perfectly nice little country, with many achievements to its credit. If you like to attend plays, want to read comic novels, hope to spare your skin the damaging effects of the sun, then England's the place for you. Countries once part of its empire, including America, are much better off than those that were under the Spanish or French. But England has two completely loathsome traits, which in exported form are involved in the reverence for The Economist.

The first is, of course, the English class system. Yes, America has its own tangled class problem, which is becoming worse as public schools and the military lose their democratizing function. But Americans can still be embarrassed by obvious reminders of class difference. Except perhaps in Beverly Hills and Manhattan, when the refrigerator repairman comes to the doctor's house, the doctor is supposed to treat him as if they're equals -- not as "My good man."

Perhaps it is not England's fault, or The Economist's, that those Americans who would love to have a similar class system here -- with themselves on top! -- take on English airs. (As Henry Allen of The Post has pointed out, the right response to this phenomenon is not Anglophobia but Anglophilophobia.) But The Economist has certainly, if only half-consciously, traded on the "published in London" snob appeal. "Americans imagine that The Economist is better written," says Time magazine's Richard Stengel, "because they impute an English accent to what they read."

There are certain English products whose quaintness is put on mainly for export purposes -- they're the equivalent of Ye Olde Tea Shoppe-style tourist traps, which the locals avoid. Something similar is going on with The Economist. The Economist now has considerably fewer readers -- and is strangely less influential -- in England than in America. Indeed, it is disdained by the very Englishmen whom many American readers would most love to emulate: the secure upper and upper middle classes.

In America, the magazine presents itself as a kind of voice of the super-confident English aristocracy, whereas its advertisements within England play on the status-anxiety of its readers there. For example, one billboard displayed in England reads in bold print: "I never read The Economist." The punch line comes in the identification of the hapless confessor of this dereliction, a "Management trainee -- aged 44."

Another key to the magazine's boom in America during the 1980s must lie in its sycophancy toward Ronald Reagan in particular and American culture in general. We are all so used to being sneered at by the French or Swedes. To hear someone who poses as a British aristocrat celebrating American vigor -- it's just irresistible! If it came from the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, we'd consider it plain boosterism, but it works from The Economist, since we imagine we're overhearing the foreigners' real views. I think the flattery is actually the most refined and vicious version of the old British condescension toward the colonies. These Yanks! They'll believe anything! Let's give them another dose of how the world looks up to them!

The other ugly English trait promoting The Economist's success in America is the Oxford Union argumentative style. At its epitome, it involves a stance so cocksure of its rightness and superiority that it would be a shame to freight it with mere fact.

American debate contests involve grinding, yearlong concentration on one doughy issue, like arms control. The forte of Oxford-style debate is to be able to sound certain and convincing about a topic pulled out of the air a few minutes before, such as "Resolved: That women are not the fairer sex." (The BBC radio shows "My Word" and "My Music," carried on National Public Radio, give a sample of the desired impromptu glibness.)

Economist leaders and the covers that trumpet their message offer Americans a blast of this style. Michael Kinsley, who once worked at The Economist, wrote that the standard Economist leader gives you the feeling that the writer started out knowing that three steps must be taken immediately -- and then tried to think what the steps should be.

A certain modesty would seem appropriate in The Economist's leaders these days, considering that after 10 years in which the Thatcher government essentially did what the magazine said, Britain has the weakest economy in Europe. (Remind me, again, why we're looking to the British for economic advice.) But the implied message of the leaders often seems to be, "I took a First at Oxford. I'm right."

The cover of anonymity for the magazine's writers is an important part of its omniscient stance, among other reasons because it conceals the extreme youth of much of the staff. "The magazine is written by young people pretending to be old people," says Michael Lewis, the author of "Liar's Poker," who now lives in England. "If American readers got a look at the pimply complexions of their economic gurus, they would cancel their subscriptions in droves."

This brings us back to Robert Wade's book. The crucial paragraph of The Economist review -- the one that convinced my friend the official, and presumably tens of thousands of other readers, that Wade's years of research supported the magazine's preexisting world view -- was this:

"The [Asian] dragons differed from other developing countries in avoiding distortions to exchange rates and other key prices, as much as in their style of intervening. Intervention is part of the story -- but perhaps the smaller part. That being so, Mr. Wade's prescriptions seem unduly heavy on intervention, and unduly light on getting prices right."

These few lines are a marvel of Oxbridge glibness, and they deserve lapidary study. Notice the all-important word "perhaps." Without the slightest hint of evidence, it serves to dismiss everything Wade has painstakingly argued in the book. It clears the way for: "That being so . . . " What being so? That someone who has Taken a First can wave off the book's argument with "perhaps"?

The "that being so" style of discourse is not wholly alien to the United States -- think of William Buckley on TV. But Americans know how to put his views in perspective. The complications of Anglophilic snobbery and Oxbridge-style swagger prevent most American readers from realizing that, when they read Economist leaders, they're essentially reading Wall Street Journal editorials, written with even less self-doubt.

Several months ago, when I was visiting Australia, I walked through the spectacular botanical gardens in Melbourne with a native-born Australian and a British expatriate. I was bedazzled by the lushness, and said how much I admired it. The Australian deferentially said to the Briton, "Well, I suppose it can't quite compare with Kew." "Ah, Kew!" the Englishman said, and then said no more, as if he were too polite to detail all the ways in which London's Kew Gardens were superior. A few seconds later, the Australian slapped himself on the forehead. "The colonial cringe!" he said. He'd made himself feel inferior about something that was objectively superb.

Ah, Economist! Ah, Kew!

---

James Fallows is Washington Editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He used to live in England.

James Fallows is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and author of the newsletter Breaking the News. He was chief White House speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, and is a co-founder, with his wife, Deborah Fallows, of the Our Towns Civic Foundation.



技术
"殖民主义的经济学》，关于《经济学人》杂志；《华盛顿邮报》，1991年
作者：詹姆斯-法洛斯
1991年10月16日
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殖民地危机的经济学》。伪经济学和《经济学人》杂志的冷嘲热讽。

作者：James Fallows；华盛顿邮报 "展望 "版；1991年10月6日。

去年夏天，一位帮助制定国际经济政策的政府官员告诉我（带着深思熟虑的表情），他正在阅读关于东亚经济惊人崛起的 "相当有趣的新书"。"耐人寻味的是，它表明市场力量确实是一种解释！"他高兴地喊道。"产业政策和政府的修修补补并不那么重要。"

一个偶然的机会，我刚刚读了这本书--罗伯特-韦德的《治理市场》。这项详细的研究，引用了大量的证据，实际上得出了几乎相反的结论：东亚政府做了很多修补，直接使工业受益，远远超过了 "市场力量 "所能做到的。

我还知道一些关于这本书的事情。经济学人》杂志刚刚对该书进行了评论，对其信息的描述几乎与这位政府官员的描述一模一样。

他真的读过这本书吗？也许吧，但不知为何我很怀疑。

我怀疑，我那天看到的只是华盛顿目前的 "圣牛 "力量的另一个例证。经济学人》杂志，每周都在我们的海岸上不健康地宣扬自作聪明的英国人的态度。

像其他圣牛一样，《经济学人》显然有其优点。与美国的任何一家新闻杂志相比，《经济学人》只靠一个主要由年轻作家组成的骨干员工就能生存，他们每周都会写出大量的稿件。新闻故事中有很多信息量大的花絮，而杂志前面的 "领袖 "或社论常常涉及有用的怪异主题。我最近最喜欢的一篇文章，解释了为什么英语作为国际语言的兴起对美国人和英国人来说是短期的便利，但却是长期的灾难。韩国人、俄罗斯人、日本人甚至荷兰人都能听到我们在说什么。我们没有私人语言可供谋划，就像他们那样。

但是，标志着神牛的是，人们出于时髦的原因推崇它，而且与它的真正优势和弱点完全不相称。经济学人》在美国的发行量在过去10年中从4万份上升到18.3万份，在美国的专业阶层中似乎已经达到了这一程度。

比如说。几周前，《纽约时报》杂志刊登了微软公司创始人、"少年亿万富翁 "比尔-盖茨的简介。这个人有很多很好的理由去虚荣，但他在文章中似乎主要推崇的虚荣是他与《经济学人》的关系。(盖茨说，他家里没有电视，因为如果他有电视，他就不会有时间从头到尾阅读《经济学人》，"就像我现在这样"）。

作为与《新闻周刊》的罗伯特-萨缪尔森（Robert Samuelson）争吵的一部分，哈佛大学的罗伯特-赖克（Robert Reich）写了一封致编辑的信，信中说 "我，不从《新闻周刊》获得我的经济新闻。我依靠的是《经济学人》--在伦敦出版。" 汉弗莱-格雷顿在《间谍》杂志上写道："如果是这样，那么赖希就像这个国家的许多半自负的大学生、银行家和新闻杂志的商业作家一样。经济学人》的全知全能的语气和迂腐的态度一定会给其读者群中缺乏安全感的美国表兄弟留下深刻印象"。[2006年更新：当时我正处于我自己与赖克的小争吵中，双方都早已忘记--我想！]

从功能上看，《经济学人》更像《华尔街日报》，而不像其他美国出版物。在每份刊物中，新闻文章和社论页面之间都有一种战争。新闻文章没有过多的偏见，并试图传达复杂的现实，嗯，新闻。同时，社论和 "领导人 "推动一致的路线，往往与同一期的新闻页面所报道的事实相抵触。

对于《经济学人》来说，这种紧张关系在其对日本的报道中最为明显。根据社论的说法，日本正变得越来越有市场意识，它的贸易顺差必将消失，它的经济官僚们正日益失去权力，它的人民即将反抗繁重的 "工薪族 "生活。同时，新闻报道指出，事情并没有完全按照编辑部的计划发展。[更新：日本的金融市场和房地产就在那时走向了问题。但它的出口和贸易顺差一直在持续，它的官员和工薪阶层基本上保留了他们的角色。］

从几百种可能性中举一个例子，去年《经济学人》驻东京的记者详细介绍了日本政府不让外国公司向日本客户出售先进的 "非晶金属 "的计划，直到日本公司能够准备好自己生产这些产品。在同一期的几页之后，一篇书评满怀信心地宣布，亚洲的 "惊人的增长是建立在有效的投资和创新之上的，而这一切又归功于贸易的开放性。"

最近，《经济学人》的一篇文章指出，日本与几乎所有合作伙伴的贸易顺差都在增加。它的结论不是说该杂志应该修改其理论，而是说读者应该为世界上其他地方心胸狭小的保护主义者的 "抱怨"（译自英国的 "whingeing"）做好准备。

经济学人》所推崇的编辑路线在功能上也与《日报》相似。市场几乎总是有效的，而政府的干预几乎总是失败的。如果某些事实似乎不符合这一模式--例如，亚洲政府在干预其经济方面的成功--那么就应该把这些事实剔除掉。[最新的例子：中国。]政治领导人首先必须是坚定的，就像神圣的T女士一样。作家和思想家首先应该是 "聪明的"，这是《经济学人》的最高赞誉。(杂志的对应词是 "现实"。)那些持不同意见的人将被嘲笑--在杂志看来是娘娘腔，在经济学家看来是昏暗的灯泡。从上往下看，应该以怜悯的眼光来看待这个世界。为什么他们不能像我们一样聪明？

关于这种编辑方式的真正问题是，为什么《经济学人》比《经济学人》的回报要好。为什么无法想象一个教授在印刷品中夸口说："我依靠的是《华尔街日报》--在纽约出版的"？为什么人们显然只在想真正阅读时才购买《华尔街日报》（或《华盛顿邮报》或《纽约时报》），而不是像大量《经济学人》的 "读者 "那样只是为了随身携带？

这种解释的根源可以追溯到1776年和美国与祖国的不完全分离。英国是一个非常好的小国，有许多值得称道的成就。如果你喜欢听戏，想看漫画小说，希望让你的皮肤免受阳光的伤害，那么英国就是你的理想之地。曾经是其帝国一部分的国家，包括美国，都比那些在西班牙或法国统治下的国家要好得多。但英国有两个完全令人厌恶的特征，这些特征以出口形式参与到对《经济学家》的崇敬中。

首先，当然是英国的阶级制度。是的，美国也有自己纠结的阶级问题，随着公立学校和军队失去其民主化功能，这个问题正在变得越来越严重。但美国人仍然可以被明显的阶级差异提醒而感到尴尬。也许除了在比佛利山庄和曼哈顿，当修冰箱的人来到医生家时，医生应该把他当作他们是平等的--而不是 "我的好男人"。

也许这不是英国的错，也不是《经济学人》的错，那些很想在这里有一个类似的阶级制度的美国人--他们自己在上面！--带着英国人的气息。------他们的英国风格。(正如《邮报》的亨利-艾伦所指出的，对这种现象的正确反应不是恐英症，而是恐英症）。但是，《经济学人》确实--即使只是半自觉地--利用了 "在伦敦出版 "的势利眼的吸引力。"美国人认为《经济学人》写得更好，"《时代》杂志的Richard Stengel说，"因为他们把英国口音加到了他们所读的内容中。"

有一些英国产品的古板主要是为了出口而装出来的--它们相当于Ye Olde Tea Shoppe式的旅游陷阱，当地人会避开这些陷阱。经济学人》也发生了类似的情况。经济学人》现在在英国的读者比在美国少得多，而且奇怪的是，其影响力也不如美国。事实上，它被许多美国读者最想效仿的英国人所蔑视：安全的上层和中上层阶级。

在美国，该杂志将自己表现为一种超级自信的英国贵族的声音，而它在英国的广告则利用了那里的读者的地位焦虑。例如，在英国展出的一个广告牌上用粗体字写道 "我从不读《经济学人》"。这句话是对这一失职行为的无奈忏悔者的确认，他是一名 "管理培训生--44岁"。

该杂志在20世纪80年代在美国蓬勃发展的另一个关键，一定在于它对罗纳德-里根（Ronald Reagan），特别是对美国文化的谄媚态度。我们都习惯于被法国人或瑞典人嗤之以鼻。听到一个冒充英国贵族的人赞美美国的活力--这简直是无法抗拒的! 如果它来自《华尔街日报》或《今日美国》，我们会认为这是纯粹的吹捧，但它来自《经济学人》，因为我们想象我们听到的是外国人的真实观点。我认为，这种奉承实际上是英国人对殖民地的居高临下的最精致、最恶毒的版本。这些美国佬! 他们什么都信! 让我们再给他们来一次世界对他们的仰视!

促进《经济学人》在美国成功的另一个丑陋的英国特征是牛津联盟的论证风格。在其缩影中，它涉及到一种对其正确性和优越性如此自信的立场，以至于用单纯的事实来衡量它将是一种耻辱。

美国的辩论赛涉及到磨人的、长达一年的集中在一个棘手的问题上，如军备控制。牛津式辩论的强项是能够对几分钟前突然出现的话题说得很肯定，很有说服力，比如 "决心。妇女不是更公平的性别"。(英国广播公司的广播节目 "我的话 "和 "我的音乐"，由国家公共广播电台转播，提供了一个理想的即兴口才的样本）。

经济学家的领导人和吹嘘他们信息的封面为美国人提供了这种风格的冲击。曾经在《经济学人》工作过的迈克尔-金斯利（Michael Kinsley）写道，标准的《经济学人》领导人给你的感觉是，作者一开始就知道必须立即采取三个步骤，然后努力思考应该采取什么步骤。

考虑到撒切尔政府在10年内基本上按照该杂志的说法行事，英国是欧洲经济最弱的国家，如今《经济学人》的领导人似乎应该有某种谦虚。(再次提醒我，为什么我们要向英国人寻求经济建议。"但领导人隐含的信息似乎常常是："我在牛津大学获得了一等学位。我是对的。"

该杂志作者的匿名身份是其全知立场的一个重要组成部分，除其他原因外，还因为它掩盖了大部分工作人员的极端年轻化。"现在住在英国的《说谎者的扑克牌》的作者迈克尔-刘易斯（Michael Lewis）说："这本杂志是由假装成老人的年轻人写的"。"如果美国读者看到他们的经济大师们的疙瘩脸，他们会成群结队地取消订阅。"

这让我们回到了罗伯特-韦德的书。经济学人》评论的关键段落--使我的官员朋友以及可能成千上万的其他读者相信韦德多年的研究支持了该杂志预先存在的世界观--是这样的。

"[亚洲]小龙在避免汇率和其他关键价格的扭曲方面与其他发展中国家不同，他们的干预风格也是如此。干预是故事的一部分，但可能是较小的一部分。既然如此，韦德先生的处方似乎过分偏重于干预，而过分偏重于使价格正确。"

这几句话是牛津剑桥口才的一个奇迹，值得仔细研究。注意所有重要的词 "也许"。在没有丝毫证据的情况下，它的作用是否定韦德在书中煞费苦心论证的一切。它为以下内容扫清了道路。"既然如此......。"什么是这样？一个拥有 "第一 "的人可以用 "也许 "来搪塞书中的论点？

"既然如此 "的论述方式对美国来说并不完全陌生--想想电视上的威廉-巴克利。但美国人知道如何把他的观点放在心上。嗜好英语的势利眼和牛津剑桥式的夸夸其谈使大多数美国读者无法意识到，当他们阅读《经济学人》的领导人时，他们基本上是在阅读《华尔街日报》的社论，写时甚至没有自我怀疑。

几个月前，当我访问澳大利亚时，我和一位土生土长的澳大利亚人以及一位英国侨民一起走过墨尔本壮观的植物园。我被这里的郁郁葱葱所吸引，并说我非常欣赏它。澳大利亚人恭敬地对英国人说："嗯，我想它不能与邱园相比。"啊，邱园！"英国人说，然后就不再说了，似乎他太有礼貌了，无法详述伦敦邱园的所有优越之处。几秒钟后，澳大利亚人拍了拍自己的额头。他说："殖民者的畏缩！"。他让自己对客观上极好的东西感到自卑。

啊，经济学家! 啊，邱园!

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詹姆斯-法洛斯是《大西洋月刊》的华盛顿编辑。他曾经住在英国。

詹姆斯-法洛斯是《大西洋月刊》的特约撰稿人，也是时事通讯《突发新闻》的作者。他曾是吉米-卡特总统的白宫演讲稿撰写人，并与他的妻子黛博拉-法洛斯共同创办了我们的城镇公民基金会。