Gilded Age |
New Gilded Age |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| The Richest | John D. Rockefeller Net Worth: $192 billion* |
Bill Gates Net Worth: $82 billion |
|
| Nickname | Robber Barons | Job Creators | |
| Biggest Money Makers | Railroads, Steel, Oil | Banking, Computers, Oil | |
| Favorite Philosopher | Social Darwinism / Herbert Spencer | Objectivism / Ayn Rand | |
| Income Tax Rate | Income taxes didn’t exist yet. (They were instituted in 1913.) | Official tax rate: 35%; Effective tax rate: 17% (2007) | |
| Political Parties that Protect Their Interest | Republicans & “Bourbon” Democrats | Republicans & “Blue Dog” Democrats | |
| Titans | John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt | Sheldon Adelson, Sergey Brin, Warren Buffett, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Koch Brothers, Larry Page | |
| Political Puppeteer | Mark Hanna | Karl Rove | |
| Favorite Politicians | Grover Cleveland, William McKinley | Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush | |
| Political Annoyance | William Jennings Bryan | Occupy Wall Street | |
| Satirist | Mark Twain | Stephen Colbert | |
| The Publisher With Political Ambition | William Randolph Hearst | Michael Bloomberg | |
| Muckrakers | Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens | Mother Jones | |
| Fictional Heartthrob | Michael Crawley (Downton Abbey) | Christian Grey (50 Shades of Grey) | |
| How They See the Poor | “Civilization took its start from the day that the capable, industrious workman said to his incompetent and lazy fellow, ‘If thou dost net sow, thou shalt net reap,’ and thus ended primitive Communism by separating the drones from the bees.” —Andrew Carnegie | “Our problem, frankly, is as long as the President remains anti-wealth, anti-business, anti-energy, anti-private-aviation, he will never get the business community behind him. The problem and the complication is the forty or fifty per cent of the country on the dole that support him.” —Leon Cooperman | |
| Preferred Mode of Transport | Private Railway Car | Private Jet | |
| Where They Summer | Newport, RI | Tucker’s Town, Bermuda; The Hamptons | |
| Where They Eat | Delmonico’s | Masa | |
| Where They Live |  Hearst Castle, Wyntoon, Cairnwood, Rosecliff, Marble House, The Elms, The Breakers, Nemours, Fenway Court, Biltmore, Kykuit, Whitehall, Villa Vizcaya, and Ca’d’ Zan |
 Versailles, Xanadu 2.0 (Bill Gates), Woodside Villa (Larry Ellison), The Castle (Michael Dell) |
*Net worth in today’s dollars
Principal sources
- The Forbes 400: The Richest People in America, Forbes
- Chrystia Freeland, Super-Rich Irony, The New Yorker
- Chrystia Freeland, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
- Charles R. Morris, The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
- The Wealthiest Americans Ever, New York Times interactive
- The Age of Riches, New York Times series
Illustrations by Joe Fournier
Gilded Age (l-r): John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, Cornelius “Commodore ” Vanderbilt
New Gilded Age (l-r): David Koch, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates
