Ask A Genius 1238: The Odious Gilded Age with Electric Cars and Nike Sneakers
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/01/10
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Are American billionaires and political elites becoming more odious or less odious?
Rick Rosner: It depends on your time frame. For one thing, we didn’t always have billionaires. But if you’re talking about the top one-hundredth of one percent of Americans, your time frame is a century, 50 years, or even 70 years. Yes, they’re more odious.
There was a time when the ultra-rich were terrible. Still, on average, there might have been a greater sense of civic responsibility among them. Of course, this would need a proper study to determine the percentage of super-rich Americans with a sense of civic duty.
Today, there are examples of billionaires doing altruistic things. Bill Gates, for instance, is trying to give away billions of dollars, eradicate malaria, and engage in other public-spirited initiatives. Conservatives criticize him and think he’s sinister because he’s a liberal, but that’s just dumb. Warren Buffett plans to give away almost all of his wealth to causes he believes are worthwhile, leaving his kids a small portion of his fortune—maybe a few tens of millions. Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, has been giving away billions.
Looking back, Andrew Carnegie—who made his fortune in steel, not railroads—built thousands of public libraries across America. So, historically, there have always been altruistic elites. Still, there’s also a slice of today’s American elites that is much more exploitative than 70 years ago.
This exploitative slice includes many in the CEO class, venture capitalists, and corporate raiders. These people buy companies, strip them of assets, sell off everything they can, and temporarily drive up the stock price. They’ll drain pension funds—leaving workers promised retirement security with nothing—then sell off their stock and leave the company to collapse into a hollow shell.
Due to this behaviour, the percentage of Americans with pensions has likely dropped by more than half. A company with a pension fund worth tens of billions of dollars meant to take care of retirees can be gutted by a group of people who take the money, strip the assets, and leave everyone else holding the bag. This class of economic elites is definitely worse than their counterparts from the 1950s.
If you look at a shorter time frame, like the past five years, it’s harder to say. During COVID, the wealthiest people became even richer. But did they achieve that by becoming bigger jerks, or did circumstances allow them to make more money without changing their operations? That’s harder to determine.
Jacobsen: Is this a new era of the Robber Barons?
Rosner: Well, yeah. It’s a new one.
So, the Gilded Age—When people hear “Gilded Age,” they think of the 1880s as a time when everything was made of gold and super fancy. But that’s not what it means. When something is gilded, it’s gold-plated, a thin gold wash over some inferior metal.
When people talk about the Gilded Age of the 1880s, it’s referring to an illusory, fake coating of gold over crap. And, yeah, we’re in a similar period now. You’ve got some super-rich people flaunting their wealth.
For example, I believe a member of the Walmart family just rolled out a $300 million superyacht. So, there’s no shortage of extremely wealthy individuals who don’t seem to care how bad they look to the public. And why should they? Many of these people have massive influence over politicians, thanks to money.
The Supreme Court ruled that money is free speech and that, in some important ways, there shouldn’t be limits on how much money you can donate to politicians. This leads to a situation where politicians are essentially owned by the rich, which is awful.
Meanwhile, half of Americans or more have a net worth of nearly zero and live paycheck to paycheck. So, yes, it’s a new Gilded Age, complete with modern-day robber barons.
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