Gilded Age

Have we ever before, even in the Gilded Age, encountered an oligarch who owns the airwaves, who owns the president, who owns our own speech, and who has the power to do all these things under the guise of “freedom”?

The Gilded Age, which led to Progressive Era reforms, immediately comes to mind.

The super wealthy own a greater share of the nation’s wealth today than they did during the Gilded Age of the Rockefellers and Carnegies.

Timothy Mellon, the billionaire heir to a Gilded Age fortune, has given an astounding amount—$125 million—to a pro-Trump super PAC.

Horatio Alger’s novels of children born into poverty could be read as an indictment of the Gilded Age social order, but the romance of these stories always lies in a boy taking fate by the horns.