The example he always gives about his receptionist/secretary/assistant is pretty funny. He neglects to mention that his secretary has to be making something like $500K a year to actually get a 30% effective income tax rate. :rolleyes:
Jared Polis, founder of bluemountainart.com (sold to Excite.com for $760M) and ProFlowers.com, and current Congressman from Colorado.
Tim Gill, founder of Quark (Desktop Publishing).
They are both gay and very liberal, and have donated heavily to gay activist causes and to defeat religious conservatives around the country.
Is this a serious question?
Maybe it was misplaced. I wasn’t sure if there would be too much discussion as to what constituted a “liberal” or “conservative” businessman to put it in GQ. The Mods may feel free to move this if they feel it would be appropriate somewhere else.
What would be helpful is if people could provide examples on what exactly makes their particular example “liberal”. I’m more interested in their attitutude on fiscal policy, government spending, taxes, that sort of stuff. I mean if Ben and Jerry run their business like Gordon Gekko but are “Liberal” because they have ponytails and wear ponchos, that doesn’t really count.
Yes, it is a serious question. Well, serious in that I have a genuine interest in the answer. I tend to hear mostly conservative viewpoints on business - small government, free markets, anti-union, etc, and I wanted to find some counter-examples.
There is a difference between philanthropy and liberalism. I have not seen the argument advanced that Carnegie or Vanderbilt, for example, were liberal, though they certainly gave large amounts of money to causes that might be seen in some ways as progressive.
Soros, on the other hand, has personally funded multiple organizations with extremely liberal views, and which have the expressed intention of furthering the electoral fortunes of liberal political parties. Robert Owen, whom I mentioned earlier, was a socialist (though of the kind Marxists would refer to as a utopian socialist) who also happened to be a sucessful businessman, and who used his business success to further his political aims.
A lot depends on your definitions of liberalism.
If your primary concern is social issues, the notion that corporate America is conservative is laughably outdated. I think it’s a safe bet that rich Americans tend to be FAR more liberal on the social issues than the middle and lower classes. Planned Parenthood is one of the Fortune 500’s favorite charities.
I think this has been a long time coming, but it the signs were becoming very obvious by the late Eighties and early Nineties. Around that time, I remember reading a piece in the (very conservative) American Spectator in which a California Republican commentator described recent meetings he’d had with some very prominent high tech executives. He’d assumed that such guys would be fiscally conservative, libertarian types, and hoped to appeal to them with calls for lower taxes and less regulation.
Instead, he said, NONE of them wanted to talk about economics- they all wanted to attack him for his stands on abortion and gay rights!
In one sense, this was inevitable. EVERY successful politician or political movement sows the seeds of his own downfall. The Democrats’ New Deal MAY have saved the American economy and given millions of people middle class comfort… but once those people were comfortable, they could turn their attention to other issues, and safely vote Republican again.
Well Ronald Reagan succeeded in dergulating the economy and lowering taxes, to the point where even the most liberal Democrats didn’t dare call for higher taxes or more regulation (until recently). Reagan was so successful in lowering taxes and reducing regulations that businessmen no longer had to worry about such things, and could turn their attention to other issues… like gay rights, abortion, the environment, whatever.
Obama may overreach eventually and drive some businessmen back to the right, but Reagan’s success has given the rich the luxury of voting on the social issues. Hence, big business has been drifiting steadily to the Democrats for quite some time.
here in Canada, the two classic examples would be the Martins: Paul Martin Sr. and Paul Martin Jr.. Both were high-ranking politicians, members of the federal Liberal party. Both served as Canada’s Finance Minister, and both ran for the leadership of the party, seeking to become Prime Minister. Paul Sr. didn’t make it, but Paul Jr. did, serving as Prime Minister from 2003 to 2006.
Both were also very active businessmen, Paul Jr. in particular becoming president and CEO of a major shipping line.
So they were Liberals, but were they “liberal”? that tends to be a more difficult issue. The Liberal Party tends to be centrist, with swings to the left or right according to the national mood, but generally takes left of centre positions on many social issues. At the same time, during the Chrétien era, when Paul Jr. was Finance Minister, they were fiscally very prudent or conservative, making major efforts to end deficit spending and to reduce the national debt, even if that meant cutting social programs. Paul Jr. was front and centre in that policy, and took a lot of flak from left-leaning Liberals.
On the other hand, Paul Jr. was the Prime Minister who pushed though the Civil Marriage Act, which established same-sex marriage throughout Canada. He did so even though he had personal objections to same-sex marriage, based on his Roman Catholic background. He nonetheless concluded that it was the right thing for the federal government to do, based on the court rulings and the personal rights and interests of same-sex couples.
Well that gets to my initial reaction. “Fiscally conservative” is a term that ends up being a cipher, a phrase with no meaning or at least only meaning that is a secret code for whatever the user intends. Like saying “I believe in doing what’s right.” Who wouldn’t describe themselves as a “fiscal conservative”? And more to the point who would take the position that we should tax heavily and redistribute wastefully? In terms of fiscal policy what does “liberal” mean and short of of a small cadre within the radical Left and who in the American spectrum would fit that label?
(Maybe those who historically promoted the negative income tax would fit your criteria for a fiscal liberal? This approach would redistribute money from those above an income threshold as direct payments to those below. Of course that idea comes from Milton Friedman and nearly made it through during Nixon’s administration.)
Most people would agree that we should tax as little as possible to accomplish the goals that we set our government up to accomplish and therefore feel that they are fiscally conservative whether they believe that the goals should be expansive enough to include addressing global climate change, energy independence, a social safety net, excellent public education for all, a balanced budget, and universal healthcare for all, all at the same time - or if they are libertarians who feel that government’s place should be much more limited.
Which is the fiscal conservative POV, the person who says lower taxes while supporting going to war and building up a huge deficit, or the person who says raise taxes to pay for what we believe we should do? Would it be fiscally conservative now to want to raise taxes and cut spending in order to decrease the deficit? Or is it fiscally conservative to want to lower taxes and spend at the same time in the belief that such will raise more revenues in the moderate to long term by kickstarting the economy? Or would the fiscally conservative position be to lower taxes and lower spending at the same time, cutting out infrastructure spending, military spending, safety nets, whatever is needed to balance the budget?
Perhaps some clarity can be gained if you start off by giving us a few examples of prominent current fiscal liberals and fiscal conservatives and tell us what qualifies them and their response to our current circumstance as befitting the label you have attached to them?
So? Does that make his objection any less real?
Do you realize that the Internet was an outgrowth of government spending via ARPA/DARPA? That the current Machintosh OS is based on Mach which was funded by DARPA at CMU? America’s aeropspace industry has benefited tremendously from govt spending on military products. Many executives know this and support public/private partnerships. Other companies see that universal healthcare would be a boon to them, as they now compete with countries whose workers’ healthcare is ‘subsidized’.
28% fed income tax and 9% SS tax is a marginal 37%.
I’m going by the Wikipedia definition of fiscal conservativism:
- reduction in overall government spending
- deficit and national debt reduction
- balancing the federal budget
- free trade
- deregulation of the economy
- lower taxes
Michael Bloomberg (founder and CEO of Bloomberg) is an example they provide of a fiscal conservative.
I can’t think of an example of a fiscal liberal in business of the top of my head.
Ironically, I would consider DARPA, aerospace companies and military contractors would tend towards the conservative viewpoint.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/science/earth/22ander.html?_r=1 This guy is my fav. He is trying to help the environment and is making and saving money doing it.
Yes. He’s deliberately misleading you into believing his receptionist represents a middle class ‘typical’ wage earner, and she isn’t. She’s in the top 1% of wage earners.
It would be equally misleading if he claimed his unemployed friend pays more taxes than he does. (His unemployed friend just happens to be Bill Gates)
IIRC, the 30% figure wasn’t just for Federal income tax, but for all taxes (incl. state, sales, etc.). Buffett’s total tax bite (for all taxes) is apparently less than 30%.
msmith ah, the Michael Bloomberg who says this about the current massive spending and national debt increase?
At least if his city get its cut.
Why is he a fiscal conservative? Because he doesn’t like taxes? Who the hell does? But like everyone else he recognizes that
but hey, he cut a few taxes when he could and got the budget under control (although some tough choices need to be made this year and next) so all this
is fiscally conservative too.
I know that many conservatives like to hold up Reagan as the example of what conservative should be, and include fiscal conservatism inside that big tent. But they forget that the budget deficit increased dramatically under his watch. One way to visualize it is with this graph. Even the Cato Institute can’t escape from the fact that he started with a deficit of $79 billion and rode it up to $207 billion in 2 years. The debt/GDP ratio only started to come back down under the Clinton years and went back up under G.W.Bush. We’ll judge Obama’s turn in a few years and see if the current spike pays for itself or not. In any case using the debt/GDP ratio as a guide to fiscal conservatism is seems that Carter and Clinton were conservatives and Reagan and both Bush’s the “liberals” I guess. After all it isn’t what words you mouth it is what you do and did.
And again, I do not need your “fiscal liberal” example to be of the business community - any prominent politician will do. If you have to get tot he Michael Moores of the world though it tells you something.
Does CEO of Goldman Sachs count?
I don’t really understand this sentence or your point in general, however I am sure you can find plenty of liberal politicians, lawyers and filmmakers.
I’m not really interested in Bloomberg the politician, I’m more interested in Bloomberg the businessman. What I am really looking for are businessmen and entrepreneurs who created companies who demonstrated liberal tendencies while creating their business. I think Henry Ford would be a good example with his wage increases and employee benefits.
I’m excluding politicians, lawyers and entertainers because they aren’t really “businessmen”. They are paid to represent their philosophical viewpoints, not put them into practical use.
Seems like one, and I hope the following comes off as at least a semiserious answer:
If you want to find liberal big business people, look for those who belong to historically out-groups. Gays are one; Jews, another. And the latter are pretty prominent in this thread so far. I don’t believe in anything like a Jewish Mafia, but I do believe certain groups have the “stuff” (historically and socially) to be unusually intelligent, or to make more money, or to be more socially liberal - and seldom do all 3 coincide.
Henry Ford was extremely politically conservative. Being good to your employees doesn’t make you liberal.