We are living in a second gilded age.

That's the argument of many commentators,

especially those who would like to increase taxes on the rich,

or marshal squadrons of lawyers to mount an antitrust battle

against monopolists like Google or Amazon.

The reason the commentators cite the Guilded Age is that that period, 1880 to 1900, had its own

Elon Musk, Sergei Brin, and Jeff Bezos. These were the Titans who built up big steel or the railroads.

Our textbooks tell us that those men were robber barons who captured all the wealth.

The robber barons locked in their monopolies and barred the door to advancement

for everybody else. The poor stayed poor with no opportunity for their children.

As economist Henry George wrote at the time, the tendency was for the rich to become

very much richer, the poor to become more helpless and hopeless and the middle class to be swept away.

The halves had everything over the have-not.

Only antitrust assaults on big companies like standard oil or new taxes could make America fairer.

Or so say the textbooks. But the reality was different. In fact the Gilded Age was a good time for many Americans, even poor Americans.

The claim that the rich were richer was true.

Jay Gould made a fortune in railroads.

John D Rockefeller built a stunningly successful standard oil,

and Andrew Carnegie's steel company gave him a net worth as big as a whole country.

These men did build giant mansions and sailed around in yachts.

That the poor were poorer is also accurate.

But that poverty was not permanent for most.

...