NEW GILDED AGE?

Lobbyist Bruce Mehlman sees a similarity between today, and what is known as the Gilded age of the 1890s:*
He likens Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Larry Page and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (who also owns The Washington Post) to captains of industry like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt.*

“Back then you had iconic innovators who built these dominant companies and amassed great fortunes. You've got that again today,” Mehlman explained in an interview. “You saw income inequality spike. The last time it was as high for the top 10 percent as it is today was the Gilded Age. … In politics, you saw a rich few increasingly dominating spending to impact elections — similar to today.”*

One thing on which I heartily agree with Mehlman is the lingering effect of the Great Recession.
President Trump’s win should be viewed partly as an aftershock of the Great Recession, just as the fear that lingered after market crashes in 1873 and 1893 affected the outcome of multiple elections.*

Perhaps Republican Teddy Roosevelt (26th President) is best known for the Expediting Act of 1903 that broke up the steel, meatpacking, oil, and railroad cartels, but he was also known for improving food safety and conservation.  The Gilded Age is usually felt to be the period from about 1870 to 1900 so Teddy Roosevelt might be said to have ended the Gilded Age.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/10/04/daily-202-why-a-republican-strategist-thinks-we-re-in-a-new-gilded-age/59d4454530fb0468cea81d53/?utm_term=.cf9ae4da1f8e
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expediting_Act