I generally associate successful businessmen and entrepreneurs as being at least fiscally conservative. Not surprising as they would tend to be against government intervention and people telling them where to spend their money.
Are there examples of successful Liberal businessmen and entrepreneurs?
Working from memory, they did have a company rule about how much the executives could make relative to the hourly workers. Don’t know where that stands now(their website is not dialup friendly) but the company does support a number of causes.
Try George Soros.
Not quite sure who you’d hold up as a “fiscal liberal” … but for overall liberal and for promoting some reasonable but not excessive governmental intervention I submit George Soros. (Okay on edit beat to that but the article is good) And Warren Buffet pretty famously believes that the rich pay too little taxes. And of course many of the Hollywood big money types are famously bastions of liberality. And Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google are reported to pretty liberal folks. Big on renewables and global warming and all that. Just right of the top of my head anyway.
Well, George Soros. Warren Buffett is generally liberal. So is Steve Jobs, of Apple fame. Then, of course, Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs, and then later of Citigroup was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury.
This is just off the top of my head.
Ben and Gerry sold out btw. Literally.
Ah, also Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft.
And for a bit further in the past, Joseph Rowntree.
There was quite the nineteenth century movement of successfull businessmen in the UK who realized that inequality and oppression were not conducive to a society where they could make money in the long term.
Robert Owen too was central to this movement.
Herb and Marion Sandler, formerly of Golden West Financial Corp.
Andy Rappaport of August Capital.
Most successful tech companies have liberal founders and management. Google’s CEO, for example, was a strong Obama supporter.
Most rich Hollywood businessmen are liberal as well, famously so.
I thought I remembered that but wasn’t sure. The company is still pretty liberal,though.
Here’s their Mission Statement.
Did you have a point that you had wanted to make about this msmith? Was this supposed to be the preamble to some debate? Or was this just a misplaced GQ? (To which you’ve gotten your answer: yes, many.)
Along with DSeid, I’m not sure what you mean by “liberal”, but I should think that Jim Goodnight (of SAS software, renowned for their corporate culture and resultant employee loyalty) would count.
I don’t know it it qualifies as Liberal, but what Aaron Feuerstein did wasn’t the usual action expected from a CEO.
According to my parents, Bill Gates has been becoming more liberal over the last decade.
Prior to that, I’m not sure if he was political at all, really.
Ah let’s keep playing. Oprah is pretty damn successful and pretty liberal.
Carlos Slim Helu, possibly richer than Gates, is a signator to
Is billionaire Michael Bloomberg a fiscal conservative? Not to hear many conservatives tell it.
Stefan Persson, worth $14.5 billion, lives in Sweden. Need we say more?
Ron Perelman has certainly donated much to Democratic candidates and was one of the big donors to the Obama inauguration fete. Not clear on what his political POV is though.
Again, did you have a point in mind?
Paul Newman managed to generate a quarter billion dollars in profits selling salad dressing, I’d consider that pretty successful, and he even made it on Nixon’s enemies list.
I don’t think you can get much further left than the late Dame Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop.
I’d be interested in knowing how Andrew Carnegie would describe himself, politically. He used the term “positivist”, and few of his philanthropic contributions could have been described as going to conservative causes. He was the richest man in the world, and made it very clear he thought the purpose of wealth was to redistribute it.
You could fill this thread just with Hollywood producers and studio kings.
Heck, my Dad was a tremendously successful businessman currently living on a pile of money he earned selling his business, and he’s well left of centre. It’s a strange question, really.