The 21st Century Guilded Age

I am an online subscriber to the Wall Street Journal. Today I received this email advertisement:

The Wall Street Journal is proud to announce a funny and fascinating
new book that brings readers on a revealing journey through the lives
of the mega-wealthy and for the first time shows what today's rich are
really like.

RICHISTAN: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the
New Rich (Crown Publishers; $24.95) by Journal Senior Writer Robert Frank,
is an intimate look at the culture of wealth in America. Frank, the Journal's
popular "Wealth Report" columnist, reports from the docks of yacht marinas,
Palm Beach charity balls and self-help meetings for depressed millionaires
to reveal the joys and trials of the newly wealthy. Like the best travel writing,
RICHISTAN is full of colorful, fascinating stories that providing insights
into the world of the twenty-first century's Gilded Age.

A perfect father's day gift! It's interesting to me to see the blatant reference to the Gilded Age. The first Gilded Age was an era when robber barons dominated the economic life of the country and lived in opulence while average Americans toiled on farms and in sweatshop-like conditions in factories. The reconstruction-era Congress was lazy, drunk, and corrupt. Machine politics dominated big cities with graft and patronage. Unless you are one of the super-rich, it is not a good thing that we are living through another Gilded Age.