“Trump’s golden age looks an awful lot like a new Gilded Age,” wrote Politico this month, reflecting on the second inauguration of the United States’ president, prominently attended by tech billionaires. The day after that inauguration, historian Beverly Gage “couldn’t stop thinking about the Gilded Age” and its “rapid technological change as well as stark inequality, corporate graft and violent clashes between workers and bosses”.
But what was the Gilded Age – and does the comparison hold up?
