There were no child labor laws during the guilded age, and the few unions that existed were very weak.
No, the guilded age
was before that, and living standards rose dramatically. You simply don't know what you're talking about:
en.wikipedia.org
And minimum wage in many states is up to twice now what it was a handful of years ago, what's your point?
Also, you seem to have missed this part which is literally the next sentence onward from your quote:
The Gilded Age was also an era of significant
poverty, especially in the
South, and growing inequality, as millions of immigrants poured into the United States, and the high
concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious.
And this:
The railroads invented the career path in the private sector for both blue- and white-collar workers. Railroading became a lifetime career for young men; women were rarely hired. A typical career path would see a young man hired at age 18 as a shop laborer and promoted to skilled
mechanic at age 24,
brakeman at 25,
freight conductor at 27, and
passenger conductor at age 57. White-collar career paths likewise were delineated. Educated young men started in clerical or statistical work and moved up to station agents or bureaucrats at the divisional or central headquarters.
Where is our new gigantic booming sector creating new jobs almost faster than people can snap them up? Yeah, we can build more plants and factories but how is that going to take us from 0 to 60 like poor transportation:less mass production meaning fewer jobs needed to be filled & wages could stay tiny to amazing new form of transportation:now there was mass production that needed a gazillion workers did? Considering the fact that actually, we already have factories and plants here...
Oh, and this:
There was also a dark side. By the 1870s railroads were vilified by Western farmers who absorbed the
Granger movement theme that monopolistic carriers controlled too much
pricing power, and
that the state legislatures had to regulate maximum prices.
Hmm, this too:
The unequal
distribution of wealth remained high during this period. From 1860 to 1900, the wealthiest 2% of American households owned more than a third of the nation's wealth, while the top 10% owned roughly three-quarters of it., T
he bottom 40% had no wealth at all. In terms of property, the wealthiest 1% owned 51%, while the bottom 44% claimed 1.1%.
FWIW, only 11% of Americans today live in poverty compared to the 40% of the first Guilded Age and 80% of Americans own at least one asset. Just sayin'.
You also seem to have left out the part that prices also decreased (you seem not to have mentioned that at all, actually, which is odd b/c as standalone data it would have supported your point that apparently Gilded Ages are good for everyone...it's almost like you didn't "learn any of this in school" and just consulted a Wiki page...oh wait) -- but that this was because an absolutely incredible boom in mass production so significant it's informally called the "Second Industrial Revolution" and because of the railroads transporting goods...two things that we already have, except we have much faster and efficient means of getting goods to people than railroads.
I mean...that's what I learned in school, anyway. It's probably in the Wiki page though I basically just skimmed and didn't read the whole thing. I was looking for actual stats, which I don't remember from school, that's for sure. I haven't been behind a student's desk since the 1980s, to be fair.
So, anyway.
Are you saying TACO is about to build an absolutely extraordinary brand-new system that will alter not just the U.S. but the world, like a railroad, hence we're going to have a wages boom because so many people will be needed to work this brand-new system?
Can you tell us what it is?
sinhalaguide.com
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