Amity Shlaes writes in Forbes magazine that it shouldn’t have taken the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency to help Republican and tech sector leaders to hold joint meetings.
After all, Silicon Valley owes much of its existence to Republicans. The single most important levy for tech growth is the capital gains tax. Under a high tax, government takes money that could otherwise fund someone’s new idea. In the 1970s the capital gains tax was complicated and heavy. It combined with another levy, the minimum tax, to yield rates that could run as high as 49%. Initial public offerings evaporated. It was a Republican, Congressman William Steiger of Wisconsin, who pushed President Jimmy Carter into agreeing to 28%. It was a Republican, Ronald Reagan, who tamped that rate down further, to a low 20%, rendering the development of new technology more profitable than ever before. Nearly two decades later Republicans again were the ones who pushed a President–this time Bill Clinton, kicking and screaming–into yet another cut in the capital gains tax rate.
But to focus on a single levy misses the whole picture. It was Republicans who advocated and defended other policies that businesses count as vital: cutting income tax rates, strong property rights, a stable regulatory environment and the opportunity for enterprise.
Today many Silicon Valley tech stars take the generally pro-business environment as a given, something they receive along with their tranches of capital or a diploma from Caltech. In 2013, when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg made his first big congressional donations, he notably contributed to both Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
The techies’ cautious, even prissy, stance recalls a line uttered long ago by the social critic Midge Decter. Decter started out as a progressive but began to see the value in conservative ideals and eventually joined conservative ranks. “There comes a time,” Decter concluded, “to join the side you’re on.”
