There’s a difference between economic politics to be lobbied for and cultural politics to signal/argue about.

That's true, but you can't separate them when making donations.

If I donate to Candidate X, I'm taking her economic and her social policies at the same time.

In practice, this means that many large companies have to choose between issues they support. Microsoft may want lower taxes from Republicans, but they also want easier immigration and gay rights from Democrats.

If a company takes only an economic perspective, they may end up doing something morally repugnant to their workforce or customers, which turns a social issue into an economic one.

> Microsoft may want lower taxes from Republicans, but they also want easier immigration and gay rights from Democrats.

That's probably why they donate to both parties: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/recipients?i...

Many times I see people cite these statistics as if they are the actions of the company. However. 90% of those donations are from individuals that work for Microsoft and list Microsoft as an employer. It’s cited towards the bottom of the page. I think that this mostly tells us that there exists a decent number of politically active employees and that a large majority of those donate to democrats. The remaining 9% of the donations are PACs which would have their own disclosures. I couldn’t find reference on that page for which PACs Microsoft is donating too though and which party those PACs are donating to.

One could also argue that they donate to both parties because they want to have influence over whomever wins any election. It may be totally divorced from ideology.

Or because they fear being targeted if they don’t contribute…

Targeted for not donating, I presume.

Does economic inequality fall in the first or the second bin?

What's the difference?

Corporations lobby for their interests.

Employees lobby for their interest by negotiating with their managers/contract or organizing into a union etc. or if they’ve been seriously slighted by lawyering up.

Arguing about race relations, gun rights, cancel culture, policing, trans rights, income inequality at large is irrelevant to 99% of employees. They’re just venting opinions and creating drama over something that they can’t change and usually is irrelevant to their workplace. They can be activists on their own time or keep it in private channels. I think all the “no politics” people want to avoid is Twitter-like conflict and drama, not a ban on all things human or real advocacy for your own interests.

if the lobbying relates to the business/bottom line of the company, then it's "non-political".