Discussion: The Gilded Age

As you have seen, many people in the Gilded Age worried that concentrated wealth was undermining American democracy. This has also been a concern recently, a time that some people call “the Second Gilded Age.” According to a 2014 study by Princeton University’s Martin Gilens, “ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups — of economic elites and of organized interests.”

What do you think? Based on your analysis of the Gilded Age, is too much wealth in too few hands a bad thing for democracy? Why or why not? And if concentrated wealth was a problem then, is it a problem today?