Second Gilded Age

The Second Gilded Age is a controversial proposed time period of United States history that is proposed to have begun between the 1980s and 2010s up to the current day. The Second Gilded age is so named for its resemblance to the Gilded Age of the 1870s to 1890s, a period marked by laissez-faire capitalism and political corruption. Different authors disagree over what time period constitutes the Second Gilded Age, while others argue that no such period exists.

Proposals of the Second Gilded Age started with the junk bonds scandal of the 1980s, the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, the collateralized-debt obligations of the 2000s, or the 1 percent of the 2010s. These proposals largely agree that wealth inequality and political corruption were as rampant as in the First Gilded Age. Others argue that race relations and civil rights comparisons are more apparent.

Critics of the Second Gilded Age often argue that the similarities are largely surface level. Critics argue that the underlying causes differ, and thus the underlying solutions must differ as well.

Causes

Authors and historians often cite shareholder primacy as one of the main factors of the Second Gilded Age. Shareholder primacy has been criticized for putting the needs of owners over the needs of workers.

Comparisons

Economics

The Second Gilded Age has seen an increase in wealth inequality due in part to the Great Recession and in part due to deregulation stemming from the Reagan era.

Many authors draw comparisons between the obscene fortunes of Gilded Age figures such as William Randolph Hearst and Second Gilded Age figures such as Elon Musk, both men who took control of media empires in order to push political agendas. Where Hearst took control of newspapers, Musk took control of the platform formerly known as Twitter. Hearst and Musk have both been criticized for using their newly acquired empires to spread misinformation and antisemitism.

Politics

The Gilded Age was a time of rampant political corruption, and many authors have compared it to the corruption of the modern day. "Bailout billionaires" have been accused of purchasing politicians, using dark money and super PACs as vehicles for buying elections.

Civil Rights

Some authors have pointed out comparisons between the loss of civil rights after the Reconstruction Era and the stripping of civil rights in the modern day. The Supreme Court gutted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 in 1883, just as they gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, in both cases helping to strip Black Americans of the right to vote. While the legal discrimination of Jim Crow has been overturned, still today, a de facto racist criminal justice system still overlooks or enables police racial discrimination.

Xenophobia continued to gain legal protections in the First Gilded Age, finally culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, fully banning immigration from most of East and South Asia until being overturned during the civil rights era. This approach has been compared with Obama, Trump, and Biden era policies on immigration through the US-Mexico border such as Remain in Mexico. Trump further instituted travel bans from 15 countries, until they were overturned by Biden.

Criticism

The term "Second Gilded Age" has been met with some criticism. Critics argue that the term is much more about surface-level similarities than it is about material conditions or political forces.

The First Gilded Age coincided with America's Second Industrial Revolution, as America moved from the use of coal to being powered by oil, thanks in large part to the efforts of captains of industry such as John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford. Some authors have argued that the Second Gilded Age remains a time of deindustrialization, as working-class wages continue to fall and workers turn to the gig economy.