10: How We Got Here: America's Second Gilded Age

Introduction: A Broken Promise

For decades, Americans were sold a dream: if you worked hard, followed the rules, and played fair, you could have a good life. A home, a family, a future.
That dream is dying — and it wasn't by accident.

Today, housing is unaffordable. Health care is rationed by insurance companies. College means a lifetime of debt. Wages stagnate while billionaires hoard record profits.
We are living through America's Second Gilded Age — a deliberate return to the days when corporations openly ruled the government and ordinary Americans were treated as disposable.

But history shows us something else, too:
The people have risen before. And we can rise again.

I. The First Gilded Age: Corporate Kings

In the late 1800s, a handful of men — Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan — built empires of oil, steel, and finance.
They didn't do it fairly. They bought politicians, crushed competitors, broke unions, and turned the government into a tool for private profit.

The Chicago Tribune wrote in 1884:

“Behind every one of half the portly well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation.”

Ordinary workers lived in squalor. Farmers were driven off their land. Small businesses were swallowed by monopolies.
And when people protested, they were met with hired thugs, police violence, or the National Guard.

It was a rigged game — and the rich were winning.

II. The People's Response: Rise of the Labor Movement

The first Gilded Age gave birth to something else: resistance.

• Workers formed unions like the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.
• Farmers organized the Populist Party.
• Progressive reformers fought for anti-trust laws, workers' rights, and public education.

Change wasn't handed down. It was fought for — often at great cost.
Strikes were crushed. Organizers were jailed or killed. But the movement forced the rich to share a tiny piece of their stolen wealth.

The stage was set for a bigger transformation.

III. The New Deal and America's Golden Age

When the Great Depression hit, the whole system collapsed under its own greed.
Banks failed. Families starved. The economy crumbled.

Faced with mass protest — and the growing threat of radical revolution — President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the New Deal:

• Social Security for retirees
• Unemployment insurance
• Strong protections for unions
• Public jobs programs like the WPA
• Regulation of Wall Street and banking

For the first time, government served the people, not just the corporations.
It built the modern American middle class — and it worked.
From the 1940s through the 1970s, ordinary Americans grew steadily wealthier while inequality shrank.

IV. The Long Dismantling: Neoliberalism Rises

The rich never forgave Roosevelt.

Starting in the 1970s, corporate America launched a counterattack:

• Funding think tanks and media to spread anti-government propaganda ("Government is the problem!")
• Union-busting under Reagan
• Deregulation of banks, corporations, and environmental protections
• Massive tax cuts for billionaires, sold as "trickle-down economics"
• Free trade deals that gutted American manufacturing

Both parties played a role — but billionaires invested especially heavily in Republican politics after the Citizens United decision unleashed unlimited corporate spending.

Today, the protections that built the middle class are nearly gone.
Corporate money owns our elections.
And once again, the rich rule openly.

V. Today's America: Corporate Capture and the New Gilded Age

The evidence is everywhere.

• Billionaires like Elon Musk and Donald Trump openly buying politicians and agencies.
• Trump’s inauguration — funded by $346 million in corporate cash — with no oversight.
• Food safety rules gutted to boost poultry industry profits — at the cost of public health.
• Medicaid, education, housing aid slashed to extend billionaire tax cuts.
• Private clubs like "Executive Branch" selling half-million-dollar memberships for access to government officials.

We are no longer a democracy.
We are an oligarchy with elections.

But the story isn't over yet. It never is.

VI. What We Can Learn — and What We Must Do

History is clear: when ordinary Americans realize the system is rigged, and when they organize — they can tear it down and rebuild it.
The labor uprisings of the 1800s.
The populist movements of the 1890s.
The union drives of the 1930s.
The civil rights battles of the 1960s.

It is time once again for a Rising Tide.

Further Reading

• Articles:
• May Day Protests 2025 (FiftyFifty)
• May Day Strong Events (Action Network)
• Books:
• The Gilded Age — Twain and Warner
• The Age of Acquiescence — Steve Fraser
• Capitalism Hits the Fan — Richard Wolff
• The Shock Doctrine — Naomi Klein

Get Involved

• Join the Rising Tide Movement.
• March on May Day.
• Educate yourself. Educate others.
• Never submit to kings — not of government, not of business.

There are more of us than there are of them.
Always have been.
Always will be.