Gilded Age Redux
America's second bout with extreme wealth concentration and economic inequality echoes the past, but there's room for hope
HBO’s hit television show, The Gilded Age, returns for its third season this Sunday, June 22. Bradley Schurman from New Rules Media and Brie Abramowicz from The Portfolio Career Lab have teamed up for a three-part series covering America’s new Gilded Age, the challenges facing the middle class, and a reason for hope in the future.
America has entered a new Gilded Age, an era marked by staggering wealth at the top, technological upheaval, and a widening gap between the elite and everyday workers, eerily echoing the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But just as past generations pushed back with bold reforms, today’s growing discontent could be a catalyst for reshaping the social contract, if we have the courage and clarity to act.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” Mark Twain, the famed American satirist, reportedly said. In the United States today, the echoes of the original Gilded Age, a term coined by Twain, are unmistakable. We live in a time of dazzling technological innovation and unprecedented concentrations of wealth, but also of deepening divides and a growing sense that the American Dream is slipping away for millions. The question is not whether the past is returning, but whether we can recognize its patterns and respond before the cracks in our social foundation become chasms.
The Gilded Age, which stretched from the 1870s into the early 20th century, was a period of extraordinary transformation. The United States emerged as the world’s leading industrial power. Railroads stitched the continent together, steel and oil empires rose, and cities swelled with new arrivals—immigrants and rural migrants alike—chasing opportunity. But beneath the glittering surface, the era was marked by exploitation, corruption, and a yawning gap between the fortunes of the few and the daily struggles of the many.
Today, we are again witnessing rapid technological change, ballooning inequality, and the erosion of public trust in institutions. The historian Edward O’Donnell once described the first Gilded Age as “an age of unprecedented wealth, creation of amazing technological innovation, like the advent of electricity, electric lights.” But, like today, it was a tale of two Americas. On one hand, the nation is now home to more billionaires than any other nation on Earth. The combined net worth of the five richest Americans now exceeds $900 billion. Mega-mansions, superyachts, and private spaceflights have become symbols of a new economic elite.
Meanwhile, most Americans are navigating stagnant wages, rising prices, and mounting insecurity. The top 10% of households now hold 66% of the country’s wealth, while the bottom half hold just 2.5%. CEO pay has skyrocketed—rising 1,209% since 1978—while typical worker compensation has grown just 15% over the same period. Last year, the average S&P 500 CEO earned more than 300 times the salary of a median worker.
Prosperity for the Few Is Not Prosperity at All
In the twilight decades of the 19th century, names like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt loomed large over the American economy and political landscape. They were titans of industry whose empires shaped the modern United States, even as they deepened the gap between promise and reality for ordinary citizens.
Today, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg have assumed that mantle. These moguls preside over enterprises whose reach rivals that of sovereign nations. Their companies shape everything from communication and commerce to space exploration and artificial intelligence. But their influence extends well beyond business. They steer philanthropic priorities, shape public narratives, and often advise political leaders behind closed doors. As in the original Gilded Age, we’re witnessing the consolidation not only of wealth, but of power.
Then, as now, business leaders have exerted outsized influence over political institutions, often at the expense of working people. The late 19th century was infamous for political corruption and cozy arrangements between government and big business. Today, concerns about corporate influence are again front and center—through lobbying, campaign donations, and the revolving door between regulatory agencies and the industries they oversee.
Meanwhile, innovation, once seen as the great equalizer, has become a wedge. The first Gilded Age saw the rise of railroads, the telegraph, and electrification. These inventions reshaped society and created enormous fortunes. Today, we’re living through another era of radical transformation: the rise of artificial intelligence, platform capitalism, and automation. But while today’s technologies offer possibilities, they’ve also hollowed out the middle class.
Stable, middle-skill jobs are disappearing. In their place, we see a bifurcation: a narrow band of high-paid tech roles, and a sea of low-wage, precarious work. The gig economy promises freedom but often delivers insecurity. Even remote work, a boon for some, has left behind millions of essential workers for whom flexibility is a luxury, not a right. The ladder of mobility has become a treadmill.
The consequences of these shifts are significant. Societies don’t thrive when prosperity is narrowly distributed. Consumer economies can’t function if the majority can’t afford to consume. Innovation stagnates when talent is locked out of opportunity. And democracies falter when the public believes the system is rigged for the few.
The social contract is fraying. GoFundMe has replaced health insurance for many Americans. Young people, saddled with student debt, facing unaffordable housing, and priced out of the future, are questioning the very premise of the American Dream. For the first time in modern history, many parents believe their children will be worse off than they were.
History’s Warning and Challenge
Despite the inequities of the original Gilded Age, history did not end there. The excesses of the era eventually provoked a powerful backlash. Reformers, workers, and activists laid the groundwork for the Progressive Era, which ushered in an unprecedented wave of change. Antitrust laws broke up monopolies. New protections for workers were established. The regulatory state was born. Voting rights were expanded, and civic institutions strengthened.
None of this happened automatically. Change was not inevitable. It was demanded through protests, strikes, political organizing, muckraking journalism, and the tireless efforts of ordinary people who refused to accept the status quo.
Today, there are signs that history may once again be stirring. Labor is organizing, from Amazon warehouses to Starbucks counters to tech offices. There’s renewed interest in enforcing antitrust laws against dominant platforms. Social movements are calling for racial justice, climate action, and economic fairness. And a new generation of political leaders is asking hard questions about wealth, power, and democracy.
But history also warns us that progress is never guaranteed.
In recent decades, we’ve made policy choices that deepened the divides. O’Donnell notes, “We did many things policy and law-wise in the 1980s and '90s that changed the game... changed our tax structure, almost eradicated regulation of Wall Street, and so forth. The rules changed in favor of the super wealthy.”
We now live with the consequences of those decisions. And we face challenges the original reformers never imagined: climate change, mass migration, digital surveillance, algorithmic governance, and the political implications of a world shaped by artificial intelligence.
To call this a new Gilded Age is not to surrender to cynicism but to recognize a pattern. The parallels aren’t perfect, but they are close enough to demand attention. America's story has never been one of linear progress. It is a story of tension between consolidation and dispersion, between concentrated power and broad-based opportunity. When the balance tips too far in one direction, the future becomes brittle.
The good news is that we’ve been here before. We know that concentrated wealth and unchecked power can be challenged, and we’ve seen that systems can evolve. But this requires courage, clarity, and collective will. It requires investing in a future where prosperity is not a luxury good but a shared foundation.
The question is whether we will rise to the occasion again to build a more prosperous nation for all.
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Funny- I just thought about this yesterday and how much our current times echoes that Age. As society tends to do, it will shift again.
The Frick Pittsburgh is proud to share its award-winning tour, Gilded, Not Golden, with visitors. We often draw on the similarities of 1892 Pittsburgh to our current time. I will be sharing this timely article with fellow staff members.