Lewis Collins lives in Hallowell.

All in all, and at the end of the day, our worldview is formed and sustained by who we interact with. It is a golden age if you are a billionaire — and particularly so if your friends and social circle revolves around your fellow wealthy friends.

Your tax cuts, market riches and political clout make this an age that only rivals the American Gilded Age of the mid to late 1800s. That was a time of incredible amassed wealth, ostentatious displays of riches and the creation of mansions that were the envy of even European aristocracies. The Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan families never had it so good.

The Gilded Age, however, marked a time, like now, of extreme wealth inequality. Regular working folk played by the rules and never seemed to get ahead of the game. While the wealthy lived in mansions, the majority of working people lived in squalid tenements. Today, many working families are shut out of housing altogether, either not able to buy a home or not able to rent a decent place to live.

While modern-day Americans struggle with gas and grocery prices, the modern-day billionaire never sets foot in a grocery store or fills up a tank of gas. They have people who do that for them. They and their friends cannot seem to fathom what all the fuss is about.

The Gilded Age of the 1800s led to the Progressive Era of the early 1900s. The level of wealth inequality, like today, had the masses up in arms and ready to wage legitimate class warfare. Legislation was enacted to focus on trust-busting, consumer protections and labor rights. A constitutional amendment, the 16th, enacted the first-ever income tax and the 19th allowed women to vote.

Although making sure that the very wealthy had to pay a tax that contributed to the common good was seen as revolutionary then, it began a movement to level the playing field. Since the Reagan era, the wealthy have fought hard and bought lobbyists to reverse some of that, and to lower individual and capital gains taxes. It was the start of a truly reverse class warfare, culminating in Donald Trump’s ridiculously lavish tax cuts in 2017 and 2025, cuts that overwhelmingly favored his circle of friends. 

If you are a typical middle-class working family, you have seen real wages fail to keep up with inflation for the past 40 years. You and your friends may wonder why they and their friends have tax cuts exceeding $50,000 while yours is closer to $300. The folks you and I hang out with are living in the Tarnished Age, not the Golden Age. And we all know it.

Trump and his cronies are desperately trying to spin this by saying that the “job creators” are the working person’s best friend; not that the working person generates the wealth the rich now hoard. The very rich have saturated the media market with political ads that demonize any politician who advocates for programs benefiting working families as “socialist” or worse. 

I believe that I am like the vast majority of Americans who have never had an uber-rich person in my circle of friends or acquaintances. How would we ever meet? I can go back eight generations on both my mother’s and father’s side and not see a millionaire among them. Our family, like yours, talks about kitchen-table issues like gas, grocery, health insurance, day care and housing prices.

What do the wealthy discuss in their circle? What are the issues that concern them in their daily lives? How to avoid any taxes at all by borrowing from their assets and paying much less in interest than they’d pay in taxes? How to establish estate plans that eliminate the need for their families to ever pay taxes on any inheritance? I’m sure their issues and concerns are very important to them. Us regular folk could not relate to any of that. Not even close.

The robber barons of the 1800s and the Elon Musks of the present day must know that we’ll someday get past the silly culture wars meant to distract us from the glaring wealth inequality that surrounds us. We’ll end up saying just what Jimmy Stewart said to the decrepit old banker in “It’s a Wonderful Life” so many years ago:

“Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about … they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?”