David F. Ruccio — The gilded age: a tale of today

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 prioritizes growth regardless of distribution and assumes that optimal growth necessitates favoring capital formation over the other factors of production, labor and land, that is, people and the environment.

The priorities need to change and that involves changing the system in the direction of one that integrates the factors.

Failure to do is resulting in social unrest, political dysfunction, and fouling the nest. This direction is unsustainable.

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The gilded age: a tale of today*
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame