The Tea Party and S-corps

I was referred to this long but enlightening article on family businesses and the rise of Trump. One of the things which has confused me for some time is how the Tea Party, allegedly a "working class" party, seems full of upper-middle-class people. The answer is S-class corporations.

For those not in the know, an S-class corporation is a privately-held company in which the owners are taxed at a personal rate, as opposed to the corporation being taxed at a corporate rate. These used to be entirely small businesses. Real estate development is historically the exception; although most real estate development firms are "small" in that they don't have a lot of employees.

The other sector with a lot of S-corps is residential construction and related fields (Realtors, for example). So the author postulates that the real estate crash of 2008 hit a lot of these people in the wallet, and got them angry and out of the woodwork.

Read the whole thing!