Progressive Values and Investing Success

There's a myth in America that conservatives are superior business leaders to progressives. Supposedly conservative fiscal policies are better for the US economy, but this is not borne out by the evidence. In fact, our nation's best economic performance in history occurred under President Clinton and during a time of historically high income tax rates. When a Republican acts shocked that I would support the Democrats, who will "raise my taxes", I tell them I'd be happy to have Clinton-era tax rates if I could have my Clinton-era salary back!

Now moving away from the big picture of the entire US economy and into the world of investing... recent research indicates that companies with progressive values outperform the general market. Yep, the conservatives - who love to tout their fiscal responsibility and their business acumen - get trounced in the real world by the bleeding-heart Democrats.

How can you use this information to your advantage? Well, hopefully you're already limiting your patronage of "red" companies like Wal-Mart, who give massive amounts of money to the Republican party and enable the abuses we've seen in the Republican controlled federal government. If not, I'd like to point you to BuyBlue, a website that tracks corporate political contributions and social responsibility, so that the informed consumer can vote with their wallet, and support companies that share their values.

But now you can also "invest blue" with the Blue Fund, a pair of mutual funds that invest in "blue" companies. And thanks to the above research, you can invest knowing that you're not sacrificing returns to make a political statement. In fact, it's likely that the Blue Large Cap Fund will outperform the S&P 500 - its investment mix has done so for at least the last five years.

Of course, all the standard disclaimers apply - past performance does not guarantee future results, I am not a financial advisor, and so forth.