Teddy Roosevelt famously argued that, when it comes to foreign policy, one should “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” Similarly, an apt summation of the political inclinations of billionaires might be, “Speak softly, and carry a big check.”
While some billionaires, like Warren Buffett, are outspoken on political issues, most tend to say very little, or speak in vague generalities. But a new working paper by political scientists Benjamin Page, Jason Seawright and Matthew Lacombe finds that what billionaires say and what they do are dramatically different. While billionaires rarely go on the record discussing Social Security and taxes, they work behind the scenes to oppose policies favored by average Americans. Often, there are deep disconnects between what billionaires say regarding policies and which organizations they fund.
The new study examines an even smaller and more insular group than the previous work of Page and Seawright: the richest 100 American billionaires. Together, the billionaires were worth $1,291 billion (more than the entire GDP of Mexico). Obviously, the billionaires weren’t going to sit down for lengthy interviews on policy priorities. Instead, the authors combed through nearly every public statement by the billionaires on two subjects: tax policy and Social Security. The project required a massive amount of work: Lacombe spent nearly 400 hours conducting the related searches. One of the first things the authors find is that even the politically active wealthy rarely take overt public stances. They write, “The Koch brothers (David and Charles) are a leading example of this: they generally combine public silence about policy with large financial contributions to political causes.” Though they intend to contribute nearly a billion dollars to influence the 2016 election cycle, they “generally make only vague political comments, if any comment at all.”
The authors dub this “stealth politics.” Indeed, only 26 billionaires (a quarter) made any statements on tax policy over the last 10 years. Of these, the vast majority of statements came from a small but politically active and visible group: Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and George Soros, who made 65 comments in total. Even those statements tended to be vague and rather brief. More strikingly, only three of the billionaires made statements regarding Social Security. When billionaires do make statements, they appear to be a rather diverse and moderate group. As the chart shows, when speaking on most key issues, billionaires are split pretty evenly (although they tend to favor more carbon taxes, and fewer corporate taxes). But that billionaires were largely silent and moderate doesn’t mean they aren’t concerned with more radical policies.
The billionaires the authors examined were rather active politically. One-third either hosted a political fundraiser or bundled contributions for a candidate (this compares to one-fifth of the top 1 percent of the wealthiest and very few if any average Americans). A whopping 82% of the billionaires in the sample gave to political candidates in 2011-2012, and they gave, on average, $74,982 (that’s $20,000 more than the median household income in the United States).
Brian Schaffner, a professor of political science at University of Massachusetts-Amherst and one of the lead researchers on the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (a massive survey that includes 50,000 respondents), provided data on the what the general public gives. CCES data suggest that 24% of Americans gave money in the 2012 election cycle, but only 6 percent gave more than $200. On average, the general public gave $336, meaning that the average donation by one of the super rich is 223 times more than the donation of the general public. Unsurprisingly, given other research, the billionaires heavily favored the Republicans: 65 percent of those who made partisan contributions were exclusively or primarily to Republicans. On average, each billionaire in the sample gave $53,227 to a Republican candidate and $21,411 to Democrats.
