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The Myth of Old Money Liberalism: The Politics of the "Forbes" 400 Richest Americans

2000; Oxford University Press; Volume: 47; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3097235

1533-8533

Val Burris,

Economic Theory and Institutions

According to the conventional view, old money is more liberal than new money. Although widely shared, this thesis of old money liberalism has never been demonstrated empirically. In this paper, I discuss the origins and elaboration of this thesis within the social science literature. I then present evidence to refute the thesis from a study of the politics of the Forbes 400 richest Americans and several similar samples of wealthy persons drawn from earlier decades. The results of this study show that old money is, if anything, more uniformly conservative than new money. The paper also reviews the explanations commonly given for the reputed liberalism of old money and argues that the acceptance of the thesis is based less on the persuasiveness of these arguments than upon longstanding beliefs about old and new wealth that are invoked by the theory. In the conclusion, I sketch an alternative theory of the political differences between old and new money that is more consistent with the empirical evidence.