Back to the 19th Century: Return of the gilded age.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/30/1242221/-The-Return-of-the-19th-Century?detail=email

Return of Gilded Age Politics

  Politics of the Gilded Age had several distinct qualities: 1) blatant corruption, 2) excessive influence by corporations, and 3) neither political party distinguishing themselves from the other, especially in areas that involve significant reforms.

   Does any of this sound familiar?

  However, there was one other characteristic that should be noted: Petty wars in the name of corporations.

Big Labor

  Can we finally stop saying "Big Labor"? Last year labor union membership had shrunk to 11.8% of the total workforce and only 6.6% of the private sector.
   You have to go all the way back to 1900 to find such a small union footprint in the private sector.

Second Gilded Age

  Along with the destruction of labor unions and the middle class we've see a dramatic rise in inequality. The U.S. has theworst inequality in the developed world.
   Inequality has hit levels not seen since the Robber Barons.

The Return of Monopolies

    Monopolies aren't just a danger to the economy, they are a danger to our democracy. The Progressive Era public understood this more than 100 years ago. Why have we forgotten this today?
   Back then the public forced the government to act to break up to Too-Big-To-Fail corporations that harmed the public and business competition. Today there is no outcry for anti-trust enforcement, yet we wonder why our labor unions have been crushed, the cost of living keeps going up, and the economy stagnates.

The Return of Preventable Diseases

  Whooping cough, mumps, rubella, polio, TB. These are just some of the diseases that were once nearly eradicated from the United States. That effort was conducted, not by the private sector, but by a huge public health effort.
   Now those efforts are in danger of being undermined.

Return of Debtor Prisons

  The Supreme Court has made it clear in three different rulings that debtor prisons are unconstitutional. You can't throw someone in prison for not being able to pay a fine because that would mean treating the rich and the poor differently under the law.
   Yet state and local courts routinely ignore this constitutional right.

Worse than Slavery

  With the end of the Civil War, employers all over the south were confronted by the reality of the end of free labor. They appealed to their state representatives for help and their representatives responded by finding a pool of free labor previously untapped - prisoners.
   It was called Convict Leasing. The prisoners would work for companies during the day outside of prison, and then return to their cells at night. Neglect, brutality, and abuse of the prisoners were rampant, as was official corruption. The conditions were so harsh that prisoners rarely survived longer than 10 years, but everyone was making money from it (except for the prisoners, of course) so the system remained.

The New Asylums

  50 years ago people were horrified that the mentally ill were being "warehoused" in mental institutions. So the government turned the mentally ill out to live in the street. Now we have come full circle and the mentally ill are being warehoused again, but this time in dangerous prisons.
  The most vulnerable in our society have been completely abandoned by our society.
It appears that the lessons in humanity that people learned 150 years ago have been forgotten.