Tag Archives: The Second Gilded Age

The Man Who Saw Trump Coming A Century Ago: A Reader’s Guide for the Distraught Tom DispatchTomgram: Ann Jones, Our Veblen Moment

The timing could not have been better, at least for me. It just so happens I’m teaching Thorsten Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class this week. It should become quickly obvious to students that, as I have argued before on this blog, we’re now in the midst of a Second Gilded Age. This is confirmed in a new report by UBS/PwC, according to which, after a brief pause in 2015, the expansion in billionaire wealth around the world has resumed. This is an inevitable result of a system that...