Business and the Right

Daniel Gross wonders why business groups are so blindly loyal to the Republican Party when the evidence suggests that progressive governance produces better results for business. I don’t think this is really all that difficult to figure out. The evidence (graph from Larry Bartels to the right) is pretty clear that Republican administrations do fine by the interests of very rich people. And the CEOs of big companies are very rich people. And business groups represent the interests of high-level executives, not the interests of anything so abstract as a company.

As long as you assume that a lot of economic life is out of the hands of the president, it becomes easy enough to explain away the small gap between the fortunes of the very rich under Democratic administrations and under Republican administrations. What you’re left with is the undeniable fact that Republican administrations seem very interested in the well-being of the very wealthy, while Democratic administrations don’t seem to care very much. It seems to me that this is a good enough reason for CEOs and COOs and so forth to want Republicans to win. And them wanting Republicans to win is a good enough reason for them to try to use organizations like the Chamber of Commerce to try to convince middle managers and small business types that Democratic wins will be bad for them too. That’s not to say anyone should listen to the Chamber when it says that, but it’s much more likely that major business groups are being dishonest than than they’re being myopic.