The Gilded Age Is Back in America, Except This Time It’s Golden
How the characters and the anxieties are similar. Plus: How First Trust drew billions in investments.
An 1883 cartoon shows industrialists Cyrus Field, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Russell Sage being carried by workers of various professions.
Source: Library of Congress
The idea that the US is entering a new golden age has been a theme of President Donald Trump’s second term so far, reiterated in his address to Congress this week. Max Abelson talks today with a historian who sees echoes of the Gilded Age in our current times. Plus: An all-American ETF empire draws scrutiny, and car dealers confront more direct-to-consumer sales. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up .
“The golden age of America begins right now,” President Donald Trump said in January’s inaugural address. The next morning, Yale University historian Beverly Gage told her students that she couldn’t stop thinking about the Gilded Age, a chapter beginning in the late 19th century marked by rapid technological change as well as stark inequality, corporate graft and violent clashes between workers and bosses.