Plutocracy the First Time Around

By Steve Fraser, TomDispatch Apr 3, 2015 Aversion to the new industrial order and a “democratic feeling” in the late 19th century brought workers, storekeepers, lawyers and businessmen of all sorts together, appalled by the behavior of large industrialists who often enough didn’t live in those communities and so were the more easily seen as alien beings. Dig deeper ( 15 Min. Read )

Does Progress Spawn Poverty? A Gilded Age Issue Remains With Us

Steve Fraser / Truthdig Feb 27, 2015 The “long nineteenth century” of class against class climaxed in the labor insurgency that followed the Great Crash of 1929. It seemed to resolve itself in the New Deal. But the questions it raised have endured, resurfaced, and grown more pressing of late. Dig deeper ( 5 Min. Read )

Antitrust in the New Gilded Age

Robert Reich / Truthdig Apr 17, 2014 We’re in a new gilded age of wealth and power similar to the first gilded age when the nation’s antitrust laws were enacted. Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )