About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the twenty-first century.
Is this America’s second Gilded Age? To answer we would have to have a working definition of the first Gilded Age.
The Gilded Age was a fifty-two year period of American history from the close of the Civil War (1865) to America’s entrance into World War I (1917). It was a time when “vast new wealth was disproportionately distributed into a few hands.”
How much wealth and how few hands? Well prior to the Civil War, England, France, and Germany, in that order, were the major providers of finished goods; after the Civil War American manufacturing equaled England, France, and Germany combined.
How few hands? You have all heard of the 400. That is 400 out of a population of approximately 30 million.
That only leaves the question: how disproportionate?
During the Gilded Age a blue collar worker earned about $1 per day. He worked 5 ½ days per week and therefore earned $5.50 per week or about $286 per year. A white collar worker, a professional, earned about double or $572 per year. William Henry Vanderbilt earned approximately $8,000 per day or $3 million per year. The Astors, the Rockefellers, and the Vanderbilts, at various times during the nineteenth century, possessed and controlled more wealth than the government of the United States.
Vast new wealth disproportionately distributed into a few hands?
Using that definition, it would seem this is a second Gilded Age. In 2012, the “Occupy” movement has placed the current disproportionate distribution of wealth in bold relief. By coining the phrase “The 1 percent,” it became clear that a small percent the population controlled a majority of the wealth today as they did during the first Gilded Age.
Symbols of the Gilded Age were the city palaces and country cottages – private homes of gigantic size created by enormous sums. Today, our landscape is dotted with McMansions.
Then and now, in sharp contrast, many Americans are facing foreclosure and homelessness. In 1890, photojournalist Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives was a wake-up call then, underscoring the socio-economic inequity of his age. It is an inequality we seem to have replicated today.
So that’s that. This is a second Gilded Age. It is if distribution of wealth, mansions, and social equality are the only criteria. They are not. The differences between then and now are as striking and as important as the similarities.
Three major differences are population, manufacturing, and trajectory.
The population of this country is ten times what it was during the Gilded Age. We have grown from 30 million to 300 million. That is ten times the strain on infrastructure, services, and resources. We have moved from a time when we believed resources were limitless to a time when we know resources are limited, and we know the limits are fast being reached.
The economic base of this country has shifted radically. Between the Revolutionary War and the Gilded Age, we moved from an agriculturally-based economy to a manufacturing economy. From the Gilded Age to now, we moved from a manufacturing economy to what? Well, we still manufacture weapons, but today the list of what we don’t do is longer than what we do: we don’t make things, we don’t repair things, and we don’t invent things. Rather than invent, we change the delivery system of the same-old-same-old and call that invention. We haven’t invented an equivalent of the motion picture, the telephone, or the photograph, we just figured out how to deliver movies, messages and pictures to a handheld devise. We haven’t invented the equivalent of the automobile or the airplane or anesthetic. All things invented in the Gilded Age that changed life and the quality of life.
During the first Gilded Age, our position in the international community was negligible. England France and Germany outstripped us economically and militarily, but we were on an upward trajectory. That trajectory was the basis of national pride and optimism.
According to Zbigniew Brzezinski and other political commentators, our power in the international community today – both economic and political — is weakening and is on a downward trajectory. That downward trajectory is very serious.
In a sketch, Bill Maher said, “Stop shouting America is number one”; we no longer rank first in many categories. For example, in social mobility, America ranks tenth. Social mobility is the opportunity for people born into one socio-economic class to move into a higher class during their lives. It is the cornerstone of the American dream.
“America ranking tenth in social mobility is like Sweden ranking tenth in making Swedish meatballs,” Maher quipped.
In the quality, efficiency and equity of health care delivery, America ranks last of seven industrialized countries. Canada, Austria, Germany the Netherlands, New Zealand and Britain all rank ahead of us.
In a related statistic, we rank last in preventing avoidable deaths in comparison with 19 other countries.
Among 36 industrialized countries, we rank 18th in education.
We do rank high in one category. Among 139 countries, according to the United Nations, we rank 12th in inequity. The Inequity Adjusted Human Development Index measures the extent to which human development is thwarted by inequitable distribution of wealth, health services and education. Evidently we do exceptionally well thwarting our citizens.
It is all about trajectory – during the Gilded Age, we were improving; today we are on a downward trajectory.
It is gratifying to hold one finger high and shout “We are number one.” It seems patriotic, but if we are not number one? What does it cost us to feed a delusion rather than grappling with the problem? It may cost us our future.
Next week: The Gilded Age had a profound impact on The Berkshires. What are the costs and benefits this time?
