Republicans are inventors, Dems are innovators

Does it matter which political party your urologist belongs to? Or that inventors are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats?

Not everything is political, of course, but everything has a politics, including the professions. Knowing which kinds of partisans tend to dominate which sectors can help you manage expectations not only as you go about your own life, but also as you try to understand trends in the broader economy.

Evidence from campaign contributions, for example, indicates that some professions are more right- or left-leaning than others. And more recent research shows that partisanship matters for inventors too, first in the choice to become one and then about what to make.

The data show that oil workers and petroleum engineers are more likely to give to Republican candidates, while professional environmentalists, librarians and bartenders are more likely to support Democrats. Given disputes over climate change, the breakdown in the fossil-fuel sector may be obvious — but what explains the Republican lean of truck drivers, farmers and urologists, or the Democratic lean of pediatricians and bartenders?

Causality undoubtedly runs both ways. If you are a bartender, you might be younger and rank somewhat higher in the personality trait of openness. Those traits are correlated with support for Democrats. So it's not necessarily the case that working as a bartender causes you to evolve into a Democrat, or that Democratic loyalties per se push you into bartending jobs.

In other cases, the profession itself may influence political leanings. Many small-businesspeople are sensitive about the taxes they pay, since often they do not have the cash flow or profit margins of larger corporations. So business owners and insurance agents lean more Republican, and some of that relationship may be causal. Academics lean Democratic, and some of that inclination may come from the perception that Democrats support science and the academy more. Academics also work in environments less concerned with such traditional business constraints as accountability, profit and loss.

It turns out that partisanship matters for inventors, too. A study released last month shows that the modal or typical inventor in 2020 was Republican, accounting for 37% of the database of more than 250,000 U.S. inventors, with Democrats making up 34% and independents 30%. In part, this may stem from the desire of many inventors to become small-business owners.

And yet inventors have become more Democratic and less Republican since 2019, perhaps because educational polarization means that more educated people are trending in the Democratic direction. Furthermore, those shifts are strongest in Democratic-leaning states such as Washington.

The partisan views of inventors are also correlated with what they invent. Republicans are more likely to develop innovations for guns (the patent category is called “blasting weapons”), while Democrats are more likely to get new patents related to climate change. These kinds of partisan effects are much stronger when the relevant work is done in teams, which is becoming more important. So invention may well become more partisan.

How should partisans view all this research? Well, conservatives who worry about the liberal domination of academia can console themselves that they have one area where they still hold sway — coming up with new and patentable ideas. Furthermore, the stronger Republican presence influences which kinds of innovations get made. Some people might gladly give up a bigger presence in academia for a greater hand in invention.

At the same time, it is widely believed that patents can be a misleading measure of some kinds of innovation, as many new sectors of the U.S. economy rely less on patents to protect their new ideas and advances. Tech firms may well take out patents, but their actual competitive advantage comes from network effects, talent, the ability to maintain and revise their software, and other factors.

Employees of major tech firms tend to be left-leaning and Democratic, as might be expected from high-income, highly educated people in California and Washington state. It could be that Democrats are leading newer, more innovative fields, and leaving the older, more patent-heavy ones to Republicans. If that's the case, then the Democratic ideological ascendancy is stronger than it looks.

But there is another way to look at it. In the economy of the future, would you rather be developing the next generation of guns, or of artificial intelligence? I know which field I would prefer. Perhaps we should ask the AIs.

____

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Cowen is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream."

Previously:
• 06/19/24 The real government conspiracy isn't about UFOs
• 01/23/24 Your child's favorite teacher may soon be a chatbot
• 01/03/24 Gold is no longer a good hedge against bad times
• 11/12/23 The hypocrisy at the core of America's elite universities
• 10/18/23 That other AI will increasingly become a uniquely human trait
• 10/11/23 US higher education needs a revolution. What's holding it back?
• 09/06/23 Kidfluencers are today's version of chimney sweeps
• 08/30/23 What Harvard can learn from Olive Garden
• 08/02/23 Why 'Barbie' tickets aren't more expensive
• 06/07/23 Would you let Elon Musk implant a device in your brain?
• 05/10/23 Second-guess AI 'experts'
• 03/14/23 Governments should compete for residents, not businesses
• 02/22/23 Economists finally have a good excuse for being wrong A land tax won't make cities more affordable
• 01/26/23 Economists finally have a good excuse for being wrong
• 01/24/23 AI is improving faster than most humans realize
• 12/27/22 Beware the dangers of crypto regulation
• 12/27/22 Americans have found their happy place
• 12/14/22 The real risk of higher inflation is lower wages
• 12/07/22 Fight poverty, not income inequality
• 10/10/22 A crisis is coming in Europe. The only question is, which kind?
• 09/06/22 What is the purpose of public policy?
• 08/15/22 The future of travel is less exotic
• 08/01/22 Welcome to the era of antisocial media
• 07/25/22 Biden's COVID diagnosis is a wake-up call for America
• 05/12/22 A nuclear strike might not prompt the reaction you expect
• 03/22/22 Doomscrolling has ruined our sense of time
• 01/22/22 Wokeism has peaked
• 01/31/22 The latest bias to worry about
• 01/17/22 America's loneliness epidemic
• 01/07/22 Some of America's top universities just revealed they're not morally serious
• 12/29/21 America would be more happy with more people
• 12/10/21 Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk . . . and Paul McCartney
• 12/08/21 The only two pieces of advice you'll ever need
• 11/29/21 Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming
• 10/27/21 America's national mood disorder
• 06/10/21 Lifting of mask mandates poses a challenge for Libertarians
• 05/28/21 Why economics is failing us
• 04/19/21We need green energy. We don't need green jobs
• 04/14/21 Libertarianism isn't dead. It's just reinventing itself
• 04/05/21 What does the world need? More humans
• 02/10/21 If Biden goes big now, he may have to go small later
• 01/12/21 Covid improved how the world does science
• 12/07/20 How to make sure your complaint is heard
• 10/27/20 It's getting better and worse at the same time
• 09/14/20 How to be happy during a pandemic
• 09/04/20 Trump is winning the vaccine debate with public health experts
• 07/01/20 Why Americans are having an emotional reaction to masks
• 05/20/20 Covid-19 will expose the ghosts in the U.S. economy
• 05/07/20 Are aliens visiting us? US military seems to think so
• 05/06/20 America's reopening will depend on one thing --- trust
• 04/22/20 How the covid-19 recession is like World War II
• 04/15/20 America is returning to 1781
• 04/08/20 Covid-19 is is upending everything for status seekers
• 03/17/20 The coronavirus will usher in a new era of entertainment
• 01/28/20 Social Security isn't doomed for younger generations
• 01/08/20 Why 2020 is harder to predict than 2019 was
• 12/02/19 Equality is a mediocre goal so aim for progress
• 11/25/19 Inflation inequality creates winners and losers
• 11/09/19 OK kids. This boomer has had enough
• 10/20/19 Would you bet against Trump in 2020?
• 09/25/19 The right industrial policy for America
• 09/24/19 Harvard's legacies are nothing to be proud of
• 09/02/19 Yes, the Fed could still stop a recession
• 08/20/19 A trade deal with China wouldn't change much
• 07/29/19 How your personality traits affect your paycheck
• 07/16/19 Internet 101 should be a required class
• 05/28/19 How Dems actually are the ANTI-immigrant party
• 04/23/19 Want to help fight climate change? Have more children
• 03/22/19 America isn't as divided as it looks
• 03/12/19 The Twitter takeover of politics: You ain't seen nothing yet
• 03/04/19 How to tell which Dem dreams won't come true
• 02/07/19: Now the Dems want to end America's nuclear first strike option. How clueless is that?
• 01/29/19: The shutdown hit a lot of government workers --- hard. But, ultimately, who is responsible for their unfortunate circumstances?
• 12/12/18: The West is abusing its legal power to punish people or institutions that do things it doesn't like. It better stop
• 10/23/18: The US needs Saudi Arabia, and vice versa
• 10/19/18: The right finds the perfect weapon against the left
• 07/24/18: The drive for the perfect child gets a little scary
• 06/04/18: Side effects of the decline of men in labor market
• 05/14/18: Proving Marx's theories right
• 05/08/18: Holding up a mirror to intellectuals of the left
• 05/01/18: Virtual reality will make lives better ... mostly
• 04/16/18: It's hard to burst your political filter bubbleIt's hard to burst your political filter bubble
• 04/09/18: The missing key to grasping why American politics seems to have become more polarized, with no apparent end in sight
• 04/05/18: Two American power centers are about to clash
• 03/22/18: We fear what we can't control about Uber and Facebook
• 03/08/18: How to stop the licen$ing insanity
• 01/10/18: Polarized Congress needs to bring back earmarks
• 12/27/17: The year when the Internet collides with reality
• 11/07/17: Would you blame the phone for Russian interference?
• 10/23/17: North Korea is playing a longer game than the US
• 10/12/17: Why conservatives should celebrate Thaler's Nobel
• 08/02/17: Too many of today's innovations are focused on solving problems rather than creating something new