Nbadan
04-13-2005, 01:13 AM
The Gilded Age is Back in Vogue
Op-Ed By Warren Goldstein
OK class, it's time for a history quiz. Don't worry. It won't affect your grade, just the future of your country.
Say you were living in an era of American history marked by a growing gap between rich and poor, increasing insecurity for the middle and working classes, wholesale political corruption, daring corporate chicanery and an executive branch dedicated to helping the rich get richer. When were you living?
Right! The Gilded Age, that late-19th-century period dominated by robber barons and forgettable presidents, an era boasting astonishing, historically unprecedented wealth alongside the ugliest poverty and abuse of power. For a quarter-century, the U.S. government acted as an unabashed, breathtakingly shameless agent of the wealthiest Americans. Forget what you learned in high school about laissez-faire; the truth is that the federal government intervened repeatedly in the economy - nearly always on the side of the rich.
Take the railroads. So that they could connect New York and San Francisco, your government gave them more than 300,000 square miles of public land. Unsatisfied with this bonanza, they went after more by slashing their workers' wages time and again. Then, when the workers went on strike, governors and presidents used state militias and the U.S. Army to break the strikes.
And the Supreme Court? Glad you asked. Gilded Age justices turned the Constitution upside down and inside out to defend corporations against such government regulation as a 10-hour workday.
OK, lots of you have hands up. What's that? Sounds like modern times to you? What a great class. "Some people call you the elites," George W. Bush famously quipped to a wealthy group during the 2000 campaign. "I call you my base." It was no joke.
Robber barons Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, financiers Jay Gould and J.P. Morgan would feel right at home today when they could bask in cultural stardom with our own icons, such as Bill Gates, Donald Trump and Martha Stewart (What's a little jail time among friends?).
This president has offered more blatant class legislation than we've seen since the 1890s. Tax cuts for the richest Americans have done double duty, lining their pockets while starving the state and federal budgets that provide services for the poor and middle class. Public transportation? Why bother when the rich don't use it? The president's current budget cuts 150 social programs. How many of those were directed toward rich people? You guessed it.
Even the Medicare prescription drug bill, touted as help for seniors, will funnel hundreds of billions of dollars of your taxes to drug companies, headed by some of the world's richest, politically best-connected CEOs.
The recent Class-Action Fairness Act provided even more class action and less fairness, protecting irresponsible corporations from jury (read, regular people) awards. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act stands up bravely for credit card companies (including No. 1 GOP contributor MBNA) and sticks it to ordinary consumers who've run up credit card debt, even if they had succumbed to predatory lenders or serious medical problems. All the while, student mailboxes overflow with slick credit card come-ons; health insurance premiums are skyrocketing; and employers are slashing health benefits. If this were a TV commercial, we'd call it "priceless."
What about the "bankruptcy abuse" perpetrated by Enron, Tyco and WorldCom, which got protection from their creditors by declaring bankruptcy and whose officials looted thousands of pensions? It may be a while before you see the Corporate Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and CEO Responsibility Act.
But if the past is any guide, you will see the pendulum swing back. In the early 20th century, a nationwide movement of citizens rebelled, fed up with corporate excess and greed.
They passed legislation limiting work hours, improving working conditions, bringing government regulation to food and drug production and beginning to tax the wealthy. The Progressive Era didn't usher in the millennium, but it did commit millions to the notion that we are one country rather than two, and it began the long reign of political liberalism that lasted until the 1980s.
You've been a terrific class so far. Now it's time to get busy.
Warren Goldstein, chairman of the history department at the University of Hartford, is the author of "William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience."
Courant (http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-goldstein0412.artapr12,0,1092520.story?coll=hc-headlines-oped)
Op-Ed By Warren Goldstein
OK class, it's time for a history quiz. Don't worry. It won't affect your grade, just the future of your country.
Say you were living in an era of American history marked by a growing gap between rich and poor, increasing insecurity for the middle and working classes, wholesale political corruption, daring corporate chicanery and an executive branch dedicated to helping the rich get richer. When were you living?
Right! The Gilded Age, that late-19th-century period dominated by robber barons and forgettable presidents, an era boasting astonishing, historically unprecedented wealth alongside the ugliest poverty and abuse of power. For a quarter-century, the U.S. government acted as an unabashed, breathtakingly shameless agent of the wealthiest Americans. Forget what you learned in high school about laissez-faire; the truth is that the federal government intervened repeatedly in the economy - nearly always on the side of the rich.
Take the railroads. So that they could connect New York and San Francisco, your government gave them more than 300,000 square miles of public land. Unsatisfied with this bonanza, they went after more by slashing their workers' wages time and again. Then, when the workers went on strike, governors and presidents used state militias and the U.S. Army to break the strikes.
And the Supreme Court? Glad you asked. Gilded Age justices turned the Constitution upside down and inside out to defend corporations against such government regulation as a 10-hour workday.
OK, lots of you have hands up. What's that? Sounds like modern times to you? What a great class. "Some people call you the elites," George W. Bush famously quipped to a wealthy group during the 2000 campaign. "I call you my base." It was no joke.
Robber barons Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, financiers Jay Gould and J.P. Morgan would feel right at home today when they could bask in cultural stardom with our own icons, such as Bill Gates, Donald Trump and Martha Stewart (What's a little jail time among friends?).
This president has offered more blatant class legislation than we've seen since the 1890s. Tax cuts for the richest Americans have done double duty, lining their pockets while starving the state and federal budgets that provide services for the poor and middle class. Public transportation? Why bother when the rich don't use it? The president's current budget cuts 150 social programs. How many of those were directed toward rich people? You guessed it.
Even the Medicare prescription drug bill, touted as help for seniors, will funnel hundreds of billions of dollars of your taxes to drug companies, headed by some of the world's richest, politically best-connected CEOs.
The recent Class-Action Fairness Act provided even more class action and less fairness, protecting irresponsible corporations from jury (read, regular people) awards. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act stands up bravely for credit card companies (including No. 1 GOP contributor MBNA) and sticks it to ordinary consumers who've run up credit card debt, even if they had succumbed to predatory lenders or serious medical problems. All the while, student mailboxes overflow with slick credit card come-ons; health insurance premiums are skyrocketing; and employers are slashing health benefits. If this were a TV commercial, we'd call it "priceless."
What about the "bankruptcy abuse" perpetrated by Enron, Tyco and WorldCom, which got protection from their creditors by declaring bankruptcy and whose officials looted thousands of pensions? It may be a while before you see the Corporate Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and CEO Responsibility Act.
But if the past is any guide, you will see the pendulum swing back. In the early 20th century, a nationwide movement of citizens rebelled, fed up with corporate excess and greed.
They passed legislation limiting work hours, improving working conditions, bringing government regulation to food and drug production and beginning to tax the wealthy. The Progressive Era didn't usher in the millennium, but it did commit millions to the notion that we are one country rather than two, and it began the long reign of political liberalism that lasted until the 1980s.
You've been a terrific class so far. Now it's time to get busy.
Warren Goldstein, chairman of the history department at the University of Hartford, is the author of "William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience."
Courant (http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-goldstein0412.artapr12,0,1092520.story?coll=hc-headlines-oped)