Make Guillotines Great Again
The Golden Age that Wasn’t
Now that we are living in the new Gilded Age, I have been thinking about the parallels between then and now. Rockefeller, Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Cornelius Vanderbilt were the men who fundamentally changed how this country operated. These men were known for shrewd and often ruthless business practices, against other businessmen and especially at the expense of the labor force. The Industrial Revolution that occurred in the United States essentially 100 years after the one in England ushered in advances for the time that were seemingly impossible. Steel assisted in changing the way buildings were built. The railroad is how the North won the Civil War, and through J.P. Morgan’s generous contributions to Thomas Edison, electricity would slowly become the source of energy for Americans and eventually the world.
Get Alanai Parham’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Living in a capitalist system, many people have no problem with someone becoming rich. The problems come when those in the middle and bottom sections of society feel as if everything is done for the pleasure of the rich with no recourse, just helplessness. The post-World War II era saw prosperity rise exponentially for most of the citizens of the United States. WWII is how the United States was able to emerge as a Superpower from the contributions made to the war effort. The following decades saw a precipitous decline in the quality of life for the citizens. It was not obvious at first but the 80s saw the wealth gap start to resemble the beginnings of a new Gilded Age that we did not know yet had not been fully realized.
Now in this the twenty-first century instead of railroads, steel and electricity ruling the day, it is the technological advances that have thrust us to where we are now. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and a combination of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are the ones who catapulted the world to communicating in ways no one ever thought possible and has in many ways made the world feel smaller, and more reachable.
A fundamental difference between Gilded Age 1.0 and Gilded Age 2.0 is that in 1.0 an extraordinary amount of progress was made in the way of the labor movement, sanitation standards being implemented, safety standards around work and food, compulsory schooling for children and the beginning of the push for birth control and the right for women to vote. Gilded Age 2.0 has seen wages stagnate, rolling back of environmental protections, wealth beyond comprehension, and the erosion of the rights of various communities. It is not to say that the men of the first Gilded Age were sympathetic to the plight of the worker, far from it. However, many of them did pledge to give away large portions of their wealth at the end of their lives. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates seem to be the only ones making that pledge these days.
The Great Recession was a stark indication of where things were headed but since most of those responsible were not properly held accountable, we continued on the same path learning nothing in the intervening years. Occupy Wall Street should have been a wakeup call to the wealthy, that people see what is happening and their time to pay the bill would come. Now almost 20 years hence, those resentments and economic indicators from before are starting to reveal themselves again, with an even more aware electorate and this time sitting in parks and yelling chants won’t cut it. As the saying goes desperate times call for desperate measures. In this time of severe food insecurity, inflation, wage stagnation, income inequality, and job losses the old rules no longer apply. Maybe the only way for the masses to get the Ultra Wealthy to pay attention would be to exact consequences the way the French did in 1789. Some things from the past should be brought back again. Make Guillotines Great Again.
