4mo ago

The Story of the Gilded Age Wasn’t Wealth. It Was Corruption. | Richard White, the historian and author of The Republic for Which It Stands, explains what made the late 19th century gilded.

www.theatlantic.com

The Story of the Gilded Age Wasn’t Wealth. It Was Corruption.

19 comments

I mean, it's in the name. It wasn't a golden age, it was just made to look that way.
- Exactly. The thin covering of gold was meant to represent the small minority holding all of the wealth.
  
  Just libertarian cope
  
  Like a veneer or something
Concentration of wealth drives the corruption and many other negative externalities. So we should very much focus on wealth first and foremost, no matter how hard it tries to divert attention from itself.
Great wealth goes hand in hand with great corruption. People don't earn a billion dollars. It has to be stolen, from many, at scale.
Wealth, corruption; toMAYto, toMAHto.
This is not a news article. It is a history article. The opposite of news.
- Then half of npr articles are not news. There is breaking news then there is looking at current issue from a lens of a bit of time. I like those the best actually as breaking news tends to be full of fud but with a few months of time the picture becomes more clear. Then there are things like this taking a current issue and comparing it in a historical context. I find those valuable as well. It would not appear if we were not in a new gilded age but since the same mistakes are being repeated its relevant. Half the article talks about what is going now.
  
  I agree, many of those articles are not news. The are opinion editorial pieces just like this one. This is political article and should be posted in politics, not news. I contend that the failure to differentiate opinion pieces from objective news is the reason so many people are able to fall victim to misinformation campaigns.
- For some history is news. American history education is complete garbage, in the US at least.
  
  Fair point.
I love that this article is locked behind a paywall. Guilded age. Ha!
- Except that it's not. If you've got Javascript turned on and don't run a browser extension which strips off the access token from the URL, you have free access for the next couple weeks.
  
  I have no idea.
I want to point out that all those articles that were linked advising the US is in/entering/ or Trump main goal is to usher in a guided age is just quoting Trump saying that's what he wants.
A vast distinction to what is actually happening, particularly with the Tarrifs.
I want to point out that just because wealth is being hoarded by a few industries does not mean this is not necessarily good for workers or the average citizens. Sure things got done but that's because they do not have rights nor the education we have these days to understand that the average citizens deserves better.
If this is what the US ends up trying to go back to, then lol. Goodluck with that. If you want I can start sending across some gold panning equipment as I know a lot of people made their fortune looking for gold during that time period as well. Might be a steep price though because of the tarriffs.

19 comments