在19世纪后期的“镀金时代”中，繁荣与萧条交替发生得如此频繁，以致几乎被视为资本主义的常态，但其表面辉煌之下仍暴露出深重的贫困与疾病。美国人原以为废奴与“自由劳动”之后，农民、手工业者和小商贩等普通劳动者都能通过工作达到“胜任力”，即足以抚养家庭、供子女起步并安享晚年的水平，却反而形成了依赖雇主的工资劳动阶层。
经济增长仍在上升：美国凭借资源富集大陆、移民提供的大规模劳动力，经历了从煤到油的转型，并在政府通过土地赠与、信用支持、税率保护和金融市场新结构下继续扩张。铁路是这一增长的核心通道，里程与借贷过度扩张后出现债务违约和接管潮，铁路、金融和市场由此形成更强集中，进而推动进步主义与新政时期走向政府监管的共识。
20世纪曾有人以为旧式寡头没落，但当下并非简单重复历史：当代“现代”秩序仍呈现重构后的镀金格局，像贝佐斯、扎克伯格、马斯克及所谓“七巨头”这类财富与政治权力深度绑定的集团重新站上台前。过去跨政党的反垄断传统和以公共利益为纲的公平观式微，成功标准也由共和独立公民与可负担能力转向低物价与高GDP，这一转向说明结束旧时代的是政治安排，而非市场自动纠偏。
In the late 19th-century Gilded Age, booms and busts followed each other so frequently that they seemed normal, yet poverty and inequality remained exposed beneath the glittering wealth. Americans expected emancipation and free labor to let farmers, artisans, and small-business workers reach “competency”—enough income for family support, children’s advancement, and a modest old age—but the result was a dependent wage-working class.
Growth still surged through the seizure of a resource-rich continent, mass immigration as labour supply, and a shift from coal to oil, all reinforced by state support such as land grants, credit subsidies, tariff protection, and finance-politics-industrial networks. Railroads, the central infrastructure of that expansion, overexpanded in mileage and borrowing, then collapsed into defaults and receiverships, while railway, financial, and market power became concentrated, prompting a Progressive- and New Deal-era shift toward government regulation.
The 20th-century view that old plutocracy had ended proved temporary: today’s order shows a reconstructed Gilded pattern with a plutocratic cluster including Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, and the so-called Magnificent Seven, where wealth and political power are again inseparable. The once-bipartisan anti-monopoly movement tied to broad public welfare has weakened, and the measure of national success moved from republican independence and affordability to low prices and high GDP, showing that politics—not economy alone—ended the earlier era.
Source: If 19th-century plutocrats are dinosaurs, we’re now in Jurassic Park
Subtitle: The worst traits of America’s Gilded Age are back, writes Richard White
Dateline: 3月 26, 2026 05:07 上午