Let's Talk About the Robber Barons
We keep mentioning them. But who were they and what did they do?
Gold.
I personally despise the stuff; I’m a jeweller, and I vastly prefer silver as far as precious metals go.
Reticulated silver, even. I don’t even like a high polish. I’m weird like that.
Trump, on the other hand, can’t get enough of gold. You leave that man alone in a room for five minutes, and he’ll have contractors in to scope out a full renovation complete with gold leaf and the tackiest relief moulding possible.
He is all about ostentatious displays of fictitious wealth. He’s addicted to his image.
Trump will gild just about anything if he can get away with it. Just look at what he’s done to the Oval Office in his quest to leave his mark on something permanent for his ‘legacy.’
He’s even doing his best to revive the old traditions of the so-called Gilded Age.
For those who don’t know, the Gilded Age was a period of around 20 years in the late 1800s, when a sudden burst of economic growth pulled immigrants from outside the United States to fill badly needed skilled labour jobs.
It was a time of rapid industrialization, and there weren’t enough homegrown workers to fill the void. Given the fact that American wages were also higher than elsewhere, the drive to come to America, work for a good wage, and then bring hefty savings home to their families was strong.
However, just because wages were high does not mean that purchasing power was equally elevated. Just like we see today, higher raw numbers in your earnings don’t mean much if everything around you is also more expensive.
The Gilded Age brought greater wealth disparity between the haves and the have-nots, with urban slums rapidly spreading to accommodate people trapped in the endless cycle of brutal poverty, and the wealthy ignoring their plight to keep doing what they do best.
Get more money, however they could. This is where the Robber Baron thrived.
Leaders of industry at the time were all about exploitation. They lobbied politicians with good money to keep passing laws that favoured big business and screwed the little guy; they built monopolies and ruthlessly destroyed their competition, wrecked unions, and extended working hours to an obscene degree.
They used their workers like machines, running them ragged until they had nothing left, and paying them just enough to keep them desperate to maintain employment.
Is this sounding familiar? It should, because it’s the same state of affairs we see in modern America.
The Robber Barons of the past were people like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan. We still know their names today because of the incredible power they wielded back then.
In the modern day, we have new Robber Barons. We’ve got Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and Tim Cook.
In the past, they were bankers and railroad barons and steel magnates. Now, it’s the big tech industries. It’s AI, computer and phone companies, and social media. It’s both technology, and also data and information.
The mechanisms of exploitation, however, have not changed. Minimal wages, as low as they can get away with. Long hours. Brutal exploitation in rough conditions — looking at you, Amazon workers having to pee in bottles and die on the job.
Now they even have the cudgel of health insurance to keep their workers desperate to keep their jobs.
I’m so grateful I don’t have that fear in Canada.
We’re still seeing corporate consolidation and monopolies, we’re still seeing massive lobbying on the part of monied interests to keep laws going their way. And Trump is more than happy to nurture this state of affairs.
Trump’s best buddies are the ultra-rich who hold the reigns of power. He wants their adulation and their praise, and he wants to surround himself with their presence.
He wants to gild his social circle just like he gilded the Lincoln Bedroom Bathroom in the White House.
He literally shits in golden toilets. The man is a walking political cartoon from the 1920s.
Now, as then, the rich are in it for themselves and their stunning lack of empathy for others leads them to treat their workers like cogs in the money-printing machine.
They’re not afraid of consequences. Who ever heard of the ultra-rich getting penalized for treating people poorly?
Fines are Just a Price Tag on Crime for the Wealthy
It’s no secret that there’s a chasm of difference between living with wealth and living in poverty.
My point is, the situation has not truly changed. We’re watching the New Gilded Age rise in real time, alongside massive global instability caused by Trump’s insatiable need to be on top at all times.
Allies? Who needs those? He’s convinced he can subjugate everyone around him into doing what he wants. He doesn’t need friends, he needs servants.
It’s the same old story with the same old plot and the same old conclusion.
What ended the first Gilded Age, you ask?
Why, the people did. When they had enough, they got in the streets and they brought the system down, from the grassroots all the way up.
The same thing will happen this time. It’s just like I always say;
Solidarity wins.