What? Much of the article is devoted to making the opposite point: that the SV elite overwhelmingly support the Democrats.
In other words -- Jamie Dimon is a Democrat. Robert Rubin is a Democrat. Larry Summers is a Democrat. These are the voices that shape Democratic economic policy, and they are not exactly a group of fiery progressives. They are the evidence of how narrow the difference between the parties is on the issues that the 1% care most about. The issues the parties fight over are by definition issues that guys like these just don't care about. If they cared about them, they would drag the parties kicking and screaming to a consensus just like they have on economic policy.
This is no different than how it was in the first Gilded Age; most of the most notorious political figures from that era were Republicans -- James G. Blaine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Blaine) and Roscoe Conkling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Conkling) come to mind -- but there were plenty of Democrats too, like Boss Tweed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_Tweed). And all leaders in both parties overwhelmingly hewed to an ideology that business interests were more important than any others.
As the old joke goes, "I can't vote Democratic because I want to be able to spend my money, and I can't vote Republican because of what I want to spend my money on!"
Right wing economic policies. Left wing social policies.
So relatively low taxes, less bureaucracy, balance the budget, etc. But also gay marriage, equal rights for a variety of groups, and science based environmental policies.
Does left wing social policy include e.g. universal welfare, health care and access to education though? Or are you thinking mainly of "liberal" rather than "left wing"?
Part of the problem is that left wing social policies cost money and have to be administered, conflicting with low taxes and less bureaucracy.... :(
That said, we did find broad agreement on many things that are completely off the political map in the USA. For example we could reduce the size of our military, liberalize drugs, get rid of the DEA, and reduce prison populations. All of that saves money. We also agreed that none of us actually expect Social Security to still exist when we need it, and so we'd prefer it replaced in the long run by something out of the hands of the politicians. Something along the lines of Australia's Superannuation would make sense. (But it wouldn't be fair to do it like Bush suggested - where it is privatized but with cutoffs that massively reduce what people can expect to get.)
Absolutely none of that is in the public discourse. But it would have been more popular in that office than anything being offered by the political parties.
In other conversations we also agreed that in general it is better to make rules simple and clear with the right incentives, rather than trying to add rules and counter rules that are guaranteed to give perverse incentives and a field day for lobbyists. For example we have laws mandating fuel efficiency standards, with complex exceptions saying that different types of vehicles get different treatment. I can't say anything about the net result other than that I'm sure that it lets politicians say that they solved the problem, while giving established Detroit companies some benefit. (The most obvious candidate for a benefit is that the regulatory mess is a barrier to entry for competitors.) But if you simply tax carbon fuels steeply enough, then incentives will be right. And then if you redistribute those taxes back to people in direct payments, then people can afford the taxes, and are left pushed to choose efficient vehicles for economic reasons.
1984: http://books.google.com/books?id=phQo8JYcjw8C&pg=PA62...
1988: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,147885,00.h...
2000: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/10/18/flash...
2004: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation...
Some might disagree with that reasoning but it's really missing the mark to consider rich democrats as some sort of 'self hating rich' or 'culture voters ignoring economic policy'.
The fundamental thing that this piece fails to discuss is that just because you support the Democrats doesn't mean that you're a stereotypical liberal Democrat.
I recently came across this fascinating statistical study[1] of U.S. Senators responsiveness to the political positions of their constituents, which found that both Republicans and (to a slightly lesser extent) Democrats were overwhelmingly responsive to the positions of the wealthiest 1/3 of their constituents, and entirely unresponsive to the positions of the lowest 1/3. Well worth a read.
How does being a part of the evil "one percent" make you any less qualified to have or hold a variety of political views? If anything, I've found that having more money makes me more aware of issues like unemployment, health care, etc because many of my friends and family are not as well off, and now I'm in a position where I feel obligated to do something about it.
Overall, I find the whole left/right political divide to be frustratingly counter-productive. Both sides are wrong, and we waste much time and energy arguing about which side is more wrong.
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled off was convincing Americans that anyone to the left of Attila the Hun was a Communist...
What I find odd is that the article equates libertarianism with Rand and the Koch brothers, as if no other type exists. There's also a hint of conflating liberalism and libertarianism.
Depends. Germansy is rather social democratic, but to a German government subsidised housing (via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and universal minumum wage sound vaguely socialist.
The broader point is that politics is multidimensional. It's not just one axis. The history of tech policy votes in Congress is a good example that's close to HN home.
I don't think this is what he's saying. It's that one percenters have an inherently greater voice on political issues (if they so choose) and that as a result, the national debate has been warped to focus on the issues and perspectives they consider important.
But this is just wrong. There are lots of one-percenters who vote Democratic. They just mostly feel more strongly about cultural-liberalism issues than they do about economic ones. But when it comes to economic issues, these folks still tend to lean rightward; they overestimate the degree of social mobility the economy makes possible today, they support "ownership society" initiatives like 401(K)s and health vouchers over social insurance programs, and so forth. These folks aren't found just in tech, they're also quite common in the entertainment industry and other "new economy"/"information economy" sectors. (The derogatory term for them used to be "limousine liberals"; rich people who were totally down with helping the poor, as long as doing so didn't cut into their personal bottom line.)
So you have billionaires on both sides. American politics, in fact, has mostly become a battle between billionaires. On one side you have billionaires who care about social liberalism, on the other you have billionaires who care about economic liberalism. But they're all billionaires, so issues that don't affect billionaires personally (like the minimum wage, or how to pay for retirement, or the unemployment rate, or affordable housing) just don't get included in the debate. As far as the political system is concerned, they're non-issues. They don't exist.
There used to be institutions that brought these issues into the discussion anyway, like political parties and labor unions. But those have mostly atrophied over the last 50 years, so we have a system where whether the capital gains tax rate is low enough (a question that billionaires of all stripes care deeply about) is continuously and loudly debated, while whether the minimum wage is high enough is hardly ever discussed.