Gilded Age Leaders Blog

 Sabrina Gubbels-Wingo

Mr. Roddy

IHSS

18 April 2022

Gilded Age Leaders

      I’m not so sure that we are in the “gilded age 2.0”. Rather, I think we are still in the gilded age. These factors and issues that are being used to define a “gilded age” such as: the further impoverishing of the lower classes, generational wealth, and discrimination against people of color via governmental systems are all things that have been ingrained in our nation. These aren’t things that just suddenly popped up again, they are things that never went away. While we have been making small steps towards breaking down the walls that are these issues that keep the gilded age ideal intact, they still remain. I think the appeal to the idea of the gilded age is the prospect of fortune, but more than ever is this fortune being maintained in most of the same families, further separating lower and working class from the ability of growing new wealth. In itself, this is contradictory to the very idea the USA prides itself on; the American Dream. It is just that, the idea that someone can come from nothing and make it into something significant. While this may have been true when America was less established and in the age of revolution that it was during Vanderbilt’s time, it has since changed with the coming of new technology. The development of the internet has completely changed the world in a way that changes how wealth is perceived. With the click of a button, someone can move money to someone else. One more click and you can talk with someone across the world in the blink of an eye. The internet and all of the new technologies that come with it have expanded the world of possibilities and connections. These connections and possibilities have come to center around fame and thus wealth. As a society, we have formed this obsession with celebrities, influencers, and politicians to the point that we almost worship them like gods. And thus, with the help of the internet, this obsession with the same people and families further perpetuates their fame and thus their fortunes. There has been a wall built between the small percent that hold unprecedented fame and fortune and everyone else, and it becomes harder and harder to deconstruct. 

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