The Myth of Old Money Liberalism

Unfortunately Liberalism is not defined nor is Conservatism but I guess there are some fuzzy general distinctions commonly associated with the terms. I thought that some Americans might find the article of interest. Personally I didn't even know the myth existed!



The Myth of Old Money Liberalism:
The Politics of the Forbes 400 Richest Americans
VAL BURRIS,
University of Oregon
SOCIAL PROBLEMS, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2000, pages 360–378. ISSN: 0037-7791

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.
--