The party of business inherited wealth

The fact that the Republicans are often thought of as the "party of business" has always been a little bit of a mystery to me. Of course, there's the corruption angle; businesses whose life or death depends on close links with the government (oil companies, insurance companies, mining companies) gravitated toward the more organized and cohesive of the two parties. And there's the fact that Republicans are always promising to cut taxes for the rich, and business owners are mostly rich.

But a few points of lower taxes are just a booby prize if your business can't turn a profit. And Republicans haven't done a heck of a lot to help boost American companies' profitability (hence the fact that for the past decade, the only companies making money were bubble-riding financials and oil companies). Republicans haven't invested much in the government activities that complement business activity (public goods). They haven't made serious attempts to reduce corporate tax or implement tort reform. They've choked off the supply of high-skilled immigrants that powers many of our most profitable businesses. Etc.

Which is one reason many corporate donations flow to the Democrats (another is that everyone likes a winner). And why only a handful of corporate CEOs have spoken in favor of conservative policies.

But it turns out that many of the rich people who bankroll the conservative movement are cranks who inherited their wealth:

What’s striking about the rise of modern conservatism is that it was not, in large part, the creation of big business. Big business, all things considered, was pretty happy with the liberal consensus. They weren’t exactly itching to drown the government in the bathtub, especially when it did so much for them...

[T]he real conservative movement was funded instead by wealthy extremists on the fringes of the business world. It was the creation of people like Richard Mellon Scaife, who inherited part of the vast Mellon fortune from his alcoholic mother. Joseph Coors inherited a brewing company, John M. Olin ran a relatively-obscure chemical company, R. Randolph Richardson inherited the money his father made by selling Vick’s to Procter and Gamble.² None of them can exactly be called Titans of Industry, or even titans of industry. Yet these are the men who bankrolled not just the conservative legal movement, but the conservative movement in general.

It's truly amazing how much of the conservative squawk machine - the Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, the money-losing Weekly Standard - has been bankrolled by Scaife, Coors, etc. The true constituency of the "economic conservative" movement is...surprise surprise...America's small but wealthy old-money aristocracy. So it should come as no surprise that Republicans have supported policies that discourage economic mobility in favor of boosting the fortunes of those who already have fortunes; inherited wealth has always been the enemy of opportunity.