A Liberal
Dose
January 2,
2025
Troy D.
Smith
“The Days
of the Modern Robber Barons”
What we are already seeing from the next Trump
administration, before it has even started, is reminiscent of an earlier time
(way before the first Trump administration). Let’s take an inventory so far.
Trump has packed his cabinet with billionaires. He is giving
enormous power and influence, in fact, to the richest man in the world (Elon
Musk), despite Musk holding no elected or (as of yet) appointed office. Musk
seems to have supplanted J.D. Vance (himself a former vulture capitalist and
the protégé of a billionaire, who financed his senate campaign) as de facto
vice-president. Musk and Trump derailed the budget plan negotiated by their own
party, and expressed a desire to shut the government down until the
inauguration (almost a month away) -which would not only bring government
services to a virtual halt, it would leave three million federal employees
without a paycheck. At Christmas time. In other words, one of their first acts
was to try to cancel Christmas. And don’t kid yourself -it is not just “lazy government
employees” who would be affected by such a shutdown. YOU would be affected, in
many ways.
Meanwhile, as part of the budget arguments, Trump wants to
end the debt ceiling. Which, as it sounds like, is a limit on how high the
government’s debt is allowed to go, or how much into the red the budget is
allowed to be. Why is Trump concerned about that? Because he wants to vastly
decrease (again) the amount of money IN the budget, by slashing taxes on
billionaires like himself (like he did last time). This is why so many
corporate leaders lined up behind him this past election season: tax cuts and
less regulation of their businesses. This does not mean YOUR taxes would go
down. Your taxes would probably go up. Plus many of the government programs
that you depend on would be gone. Musk, whom Trump is tasking with cutting
government expenses, has made it clear more than once (as have many Republican
politicians) that social security and Medicare are at the top of the list to be
cut. Also meanwhile… Trump promised to roll back higher prices on day one,
which got him a lot of votes, and he is already backpedaling on that and saying
it is beyond his control. However, his fat cat buddies are already benefiting.
By most accounts, Musk’s personal wealth has soared just since election day.
So, to recap: The very wealthiest elites are going to be
benefiting hand-over-fist, at the expense of the middle and working class, AND
they are going to be running things politically with little-to-nothing standing
in their way. Fewer regulations will save them more money, at the expense of
the things protected by those regulations, such as public safety and the public
benefit.
We are hip-deep in a new Gilded Age. A brief history lesson:
the Gilded Age was that period, from the 1870s to the 1890s and coinciding with
the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914), when huge fortunes were being
made by a handful of individuals with names like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and
Carnegie, while the middle and working class suffered from low wages, unsafe
labor conditions, frequent unemployment, and general poverty. The rich got much
richer and the poor got much poorer. The very term “gilded age”, coined by Mark
Twain in the 1870s, indicates that it LOOKED like a golden age on the surface,
but that was only a patina and was not solid. The Gilded Age is also known for
being the most politically corrupt era of U.S. history (which is really saying
something). I sometimes challenge students to see how many presidents they can
name between Ulysses Grant and Teddy Roosevelt (1877-1901). They usually can’t
name any at all- because none of them really stand out, because none of them
really did much. Nor were they really in charge. They were the puppets of the
business tycoons. Those tycoons were often called “robber barons” -implying
they acted like they thought they were nobility (some actually built castles or
huge mansions), but they had gained their fortunes at the expense of other
people. “Get rich,” Twain described their attitude: “dishonestly if you can,
honestly if you must.”
By the way, it was during that time period that, in this
region, railroads and coal companies did everything they could (including
force) to take land away from farmers, leaving those farmers no longer
self-sufficient and, instead, forced to live on whatever low wages those
businesses offered. It was the beginning of the perennial impoverishment of the
Upper Cumberland.
The robber barons never really left- but now they are more
firmly and openly in control, of the economy and of your life -than they have
been in over a century.
How did people resist them then? Stay tuned.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic
Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE
