8 Ways America's Headed Back to the Robber-Baron Era

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/story/156111/8_ways_america%27s_headed_back_to_the_robber-baron_era/

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Over the past 40 years, corporations and politicians have rolled back many of the gains made by working and middle-class people over the previous century. We have the highest level of income inequality in 90 years, both private and public sector unions are under a concerted attack, and federal and state governments intend to cut deficits by slashing services to the poor.

We are recreating the Gilded Age, the period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries when corporations ruled this nation, buying politicians, using violence against unions, and engaging in open corruption. During the Gilded Age, many Americans lived in stark poverty, in crowded tenement housing, without safe workplaces, and lacked any safety net to help lift them out of hard times.

With Republicans more committed than ever to repealing every economic gain the working-class has achieved in the last century and the Democrats seemingly unable to resist, we need to understand the Gilded Age to see what conservatives are trying to do to this nation. Here are 8 ways our corporations, politicians and courts are trying to recreate the Gilded Age.

1. Unregulated Corporate Capitalism Creates Economic Collapse

In the late 19th century, corrupt railroad capitalists created the Panic of 1873 and Panic of 1893 through lying about their business activities, buying off politicians and siphoning off capital into their own pockets. Railroad corporations set up phony corporations that allowed them to embezzle money from the railroad into their bank accounts. When exposed, the entire economy collapsed as banks failed around the country. The Panic of 1893 lasted five years, created 25% unemployment, and was the worst economic crisis in American history before the Great Depression.

[d_r]

1. that is their goal

a few in the overlord class, the multitudes in poverty.

[Puzzledtraveller]

2. But we have the reigns, and have had them for almost 4 years now.

I often ask, where was OWS when Bush was in office, bleeding us dry? I ask not as an accusation, and not that protest isn't relevant or needed now, but when our guy is at the top, who do we point the finger at? If we win in November and get another 4 years and things get worse, or stay the same, the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, who will we blame then?

[canoeist52]

3. We, the people of OWS, thought he was our guy four years ago

and worked hard to get him elected. Now we're taking to heart his advice and being the change we want.

[rurallib]

4. Excellent article

sadly most Americans don't care. Even if they did they are so mis-educated they wouldn't understand.

[intheflow]

5. "Headed back"?

Christ almighty, we've BEEN back for at least a decade. This author's just catching on?

[Starry Messenger]

6. It never went away.

Not really.

[MadHound]

7. Headed back? We're already there.

What few people want to admit is that we've been back in the robber baron era for a good fourteen, fifteen years now. It was in '98 that the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us opened to a record breaking chasm. It was in the nineties that deregulation set the corporate beast lose. It was in the nineties that our social safety net was shredded.

The sad thing is that the robber baron era won't end until there is a massive crash and the people revolt.

[Liberal Gramma]

8. A question for the historians in the audience

What put an end to the Gilded Age? Was it the Great Depression? WWI? Some believe it never ended, but it did abate and the middle class grew stronger and more affluent for about a generation after WWII. Another related question: if the Great Depression ended the Gilded Age, should we have let the banks fail this time? It's hard to balance the prospect of greater misery and unemployment against the prospect of the fat cats losing their money and power in a depression. WWII put an end to the depression, but it was not the war itself that ended it, but greater government spending that put people back to work. So...does that mean that the prudent course would have been to let the banks fail and put that money into stimulus spending on infrastructure?

[salvorhardin]

9. In large part it was the 2nd Great Awakening which helped usher in the Progressive Era

All those kooky new religious and paranormalist movements of the 1800s are also the origin of many of the reform movements and progressive ideals that are synonymous with FDR-style liberalism.

Fun fact: Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner coined the term 'gilded age' in their satirical novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Read it for free online (or download it) at Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3178).

[deutsey]

10. That's been the plan all along: erase all the progress made during the 20th century n/t