Keynote Address: A Second Gilded Age? Historical Parallels, Differences, Lessons

Although there is much debate about the causes of economic inequality today, no one contests the fact or scale of it. So why question the idea of a “second Gilded Age”? Because if we are to learn from history, we must also remember that “the past is a different country.” The differences between each period, in other words, may be just as important as the similarities. Steve Fraser, the author of multiple works analyzing the culture, economic life, and politics of both late 19th. and late 20th c. America, kicks off the daylong conversation, comparing the eras.

Steve Fraser is a historian, writer, and editor, and has taught at Columbia University, Princeton University, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania. His first book, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (1991), he examines the relationship between the New Deal and the rise of the modern labor movement. His later works, including Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace (2008) and Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life (2005), explore the ways American society and culture reacted to the presence of powerful economic elites. Most recently, he is the author of The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power (2015), The Limousine Liberal: How an Incendiary Image United the Right and Fractured America (2016), and Class Matters: The Strange Career of an American Delusion (2018).