When we think about the Civil War, 1861 – 1865, most of us recall it was the North against the South, about 750,000 Americans died, and the Union victory ended slavery in America. Few of us will note that the Civil War marked the beginning of the American Industrial Age.
The northern states, especially, shifted from agriculture to industry as steam-powered machinery and mass-production techniques cranked out clothing, weapons, and food for the Union troops, railroads were built to transport goods and troops, and telegraph technology enabled speedy wartime communications.
The Gilded Age
Then came America’s so-called Gilded Age, 1870 – 1900, when greedy profiteers — or ambitious captains of industry, depending on your perspective — amassed enormous fortunes by monopolizing key resources and industries such as oil, steel, and railroads. John D. Rockefeller, the founder of the Standard Oil Company, was worth about $500 billion in today’s dollars, which would make him the second richest person in the world (trailing Elon Musk and his estimated $800 billion) if he were alive today.
Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie monopolized the American steel industry. In 1901 he sold Carnegie Steel Company to J. P. Morgan for $303 million, making him even wealthier than John D. Rockefeller for a time. Other great robber barons include Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroads), J.P. Duke (tobacco), and John Warne Gates (steel and oil).
These enormously profitable industries gave rise to speculation in the stock market, as everyone wanted a piece of the pie. Banks were largely unregulated, and everyday Americans borrowed money they invested in the market. The so-called “Roaring Twenties” created mountains of debt, as people were living it up on borrowed money and/or fleeting returns on their investments.
The Great Depression
The Great Depression, 1929 – 1939, occurred when overwhelming debt caused a marked decrease in spending and manufacturing. By 1933 the U.S. unemployment rate had risen to 25%, about one-third of farmers had lost their land, and more than a third of American banks had folded.
Rampant unemployment and hardship in America, Great Britain, Germany, and elsewhere gave rise to radical new philosophies and politics. In Germany and Italy, fascism flourished. In America, the Communist Party promoted and organized industrial unionization, fought for racial and gender equality, and championed social safety nets such as unemployment compensation and Social Security. Communists also led the fight for child-labor laws as well as the 8-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek.
It’s not known exactly how many Americans starved to death during the Great Depression. However, millions suffered from severe malnutrition, which in turn caused millions of deaths from diseases and lack of medical care. Soup kitchens and bread lines helped to ward off starvation in America’s big cities. Starvation was probably more prevalent in rural areas. An estimated 200,000 American children were vagrant, homeless, and severely malnourished and/or starving during the Great Depression.
The first social safety net
On August 14, 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law as part of his New Deal. The first taxes were collected in January 1937, and the first regular monthly benefits began in January 1940.
From its very beginning, Social Security was denounced and opposed by voices from the left and right. The left said it didn’t go far enough to provide for Americans’ basic needs. The right said it went too far and created unfair taxation on workers and employers. Some employers resented their obligation to match employees’ FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) tax which covers both Social Security and Medicare. Moreover, some employers and politicians on the right never forgot that Social Security was initially promoted by the Communist Party, and therefore they deemed it inherently un-American.
The Tea Party
The Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party appeared in 2009 in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis bailouts and the 2009 stimulus package. Tea Party politicians and their constituents were fundamentally opposed to funding federal programs such as the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), aka food stamps.
By 2010, some Tea Party hardliners claimed the U.S. Constitution allowed federal tax dollars to fund the military only, while more moderate Tea-publicans called for cuts across the board that included defense spending.
And today ...
The current U.S. military campaign against Iran is costing an average of more than $1 billion per day. President Trump has requested $1.5 trillion in defense spending for 2027 – a whopping 42% increase – while slashing nondefense spending by $73 billion, or 10%.
On April 1, President Donald J. Trump declared, “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”
And yet, in a 2025 AARP survey, 96% of respondents said Social Security is vital, and 83% of Americans have a favorable view of the program overall. Support for Social Security is consistent across all party lines and age groups.
Meanwhile, a new report from OXFAM International reveals: “The amount of untaxed wealth hidden offshore by the richest 0.1 percent exceeds the entire wealth of the poorest half of humanity (4.1 billion people). ... Oxfam estimates that $3.55 trillion in untaxed wealth was stashed offshore in tax havens and unreported accounts in 2024.”
Republicans have cut taxes for the wealthy six times since 1980. If wealthy Americans and American corporations paid their fair share of taxes, we could fund social programs and balance the federal budget.
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