Gilded Age

The Gilded Age refers to the period in American history from roughly the 1870s to the 1890s, characterized by rapid industrialization, enormous wealth accumulation by tycoons and elites, stark economic inequality, and ostentatious displays of wealth alongside widespread poverty. The term is used in claims to characterize the era’s elites, farmers, agrarian populists, and its social and economic dynamics, and is often invoked as a comparative benchmark for inequality and laissez-faire ideology.

Claims that use this term

• Gilded Age elites spent fortunes on display while most Americans earned under $1,200 yearly.
• Gilded Age farmers saw themselves as profit-seeking speculators as well as laborers.
• Gilded Age agrarian populists combined speculative imagination with nativism and racism
• Gilded Age tycoon ideology rehearsed Silicon Valley’s survival-of-the-fittest rhetoric.
• Digital growth coincided with inequality levels unseen since the Gilded Age
• Gilded Age social Darwinism and ‘network effects’ both excuse capitalist concentration as fate