CNN
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President Donald Trump has declared that his normal bombing, and his second term will be a new “golden age” for the country.
Some critics argue that the United States seems to be like the era of gold, the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
For a better sense of the golden era that is named from Mark Towein and Charles Dudley’s novel “Golden Age: The Story of Today”, I am an emeritus professor in Stanford’s history and “Republic. We talked to the author, Richard White, and the history of the United States from the reconstruction to the golden era. This book is part of the history of Oxford in the United States.
The conversation on our phone edited for length is as follows:
Wolf: President Donald Trump says this is the beginning of the new golden age, but critics call it the “gold era.” You wrote a book about the golden era. What kind of comparison can be seen?
White: I think there are many comparisons, but you need to be aware of choosing cherry. There are many differences between the late 19th century and today, but it is true that Trump focuses on US industrialization, tariffs, and wealthy courts. Golden age.
Wolf: During his first term, he was a big fan of Andrew Jackson, but he is now a big fan of William McKinry, probably when you cut it, The last president of. What can be seen in his presidential position that excites William McKinry and Trump?
White: It’s a difficult question to answer because Trump doesn’t know much about William McKinry. However, I think he chose William McKinley because William McKinley was a McKinley tariff architect and it was a political disaster. And William McKinley is an imperialist, and Trump seems to have the ambition of the empire on paper in his second phase.
(Note: McKinley’s tariffs enacted when McKinley was in Congress was raised to nearly 50 % of products that were manufactured.)
Wolf: As a president, McKinley opposed tariffs and talked to a tariff historian who said Trump was in the opposite direction. Is that a feeling of your thing?
White: McKinley was always provocative, but he has revised his attitude toward duties. McKinley learned from McKinley’s tariff disaster. McKinley’s tariffs have driven out Republican members from power in the next election. And when he came back, McKinley was certainly dominant, but he had a much more modest tariff set than for the first time. So I never said that McKinley had opposed tariffs, but he certainly fixed his opinion.
Wolf: McKinley was later assassinated and may be linked to the reform of the public worker. Now, Trump is in the opposite direction and is trying to regain more power than the bureaucracy. What can I say about public servant reform in the late 19th century? Are we now in the opposite direction?
White: I want to play cards. Civil servant reforms in the late 19th century were not very effective at first. There were still a huge number of political appointments.
I think McKinley’s assassination was not so closely linked to civil servant reform. But what happens after McKinley -it is due to theodore Roosevelt. Really, we remember William McKinley because he was the president who created President Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt was the President who began to start a full -fledged bureaucracy in the United States. He was a reformer, and it would not have been the same enthusiasm that Roosevelt had, though McKinley would have been in that direction.
High -tech Titan vs. Barudon and industrialists
Wolf: Another thing I think can be a connection with the golden age is that the technology Titan has accumulated behind him during Trump’s inauguration. There is an obvious comparison with the bureau and industrialists. Is there a previous case in your heart for today’s Ilon Mask and his influence?
White: Yes. I think the big wealth of the United States always depends on the government’s assistance. Elon Mask has gained a huge amount of wealth from government contracts and government subsidies. In the late 19th century, it will be tariff -one of the important things about tariffs -it will be a tariff and subsidy that creates the first great American property in the railway industry.
The method that large companies and very wealthy people are linked to government policies is a very golden era. This is one of the biggest similarities in the current two periods. Trump is very wealthy and likes to pretend -he is a wealthy man, but he likes to pretend to be equivalent to their property -we The diagnosis of where is almost no diagnosis.
Wolf: But considering a person like a JD rockfeller, he was involved in politics, but did not have an office in the executive office building.
White: He didn’t, but there were many other people in front of him. Carnegie was involved in politics. Tom Scott, who has one of the first great railroads, is very involved in politics. The baron of the golden era owned a newspaper like Jeff Bezos. They are people who are closely involved in the lobby. They invent a modern lobby through a company. Therefore, there may be no accurate similarity to the Ilon Mask, but remember that Eron Mask is a few months politicians. I don’t know what this will happen, but the involvement of very wealthy people in American politics is an old story.
Wolf: I saw what you wrote before the Trump era, between the inequality in the late 19th century and the similarities between today’s inequity, but the US history has the motivation for profits. I claim that there was a very different era from today. Are you still holding that view, or has your thoughts changed in recent years?
White: No, I think it’s one of the permanent battles in American politics. Due to the ability, there is an old ideal in the 19th century golden age. Most American goals during this period were incredibly rich. He supported his family, abandoned money in the old age, ensured safety, and had enough money to become independent. I don’t think it really disappeared. There is a specific era that emphasizes a specific desire for large wealth, but my feelings are the most modern American, not they work. They haven’t really used that word and are more interested in their abilities. It is very wealthy that the media, popular media, and the Internet are being published very often. That is the part that appears. However, there is a major question that expresses most American ambitions today.
Bitcoin vs. Gold Standard
Wolf: Trump wants to be President Crypto, and there is a belief that bitcoin can be a kind of preparatory currency. There is this Memstock that Trump at that moment, in the moment he was so wealthy. Returning to the golden era, it was an evolving currency. Now, we seem to be in the place where Trump is watching it. Perhaps you change how to use the dollar. From a historical perspective on how the dollar has become powerful, what is your thoughts?
White: One of the big problems in the golden era was the gold standard. The political campaign has fought about whether the standard should be based on gold, whether it should be a Fiat currency like today, and whether it should be a mixture of gold and silver. Therefore, the problem of currency is very old.
When you start talking about bitcoin and start talking about Mys’s shares, you’re approaching something that happened. This is a huge amount of speculation in the shadow stock market, not the stock market. People did not literally buy stocks, but they were betting on whether the stock would go up and down. There is a way to operate the stock market a kind of gambling. And in this case, it was literally gambling. And to me, it looks like a Mome stock and bitcoin. It’s really gambling. There is nothing behind it. Not there. As soon as someone seizes the foundation, someone simply stops believing in it, and everything collapses. I think we will be in a very dangerous speculative area. But that is not a precedent. This kind of thing happened in the early 20th century.
One of the things I add to this is that there is a structural difference between the late 19th century and today when people talk about tariffs. In the late 19th century, the government was performing surplus due to tariffs. The government’s problems were deflation, the Ministry of Finance had too much money, and tariffs were one of our main sources.
One of the things that McKinri was trying to do, and what the Republican members were trying to do was raising tariffs to reduce the federal deficit by increasing the tariffs. Deflation that came with Gold Standard.
Now we are in a very different situation. That’s because there is a big deficit now, and the idea that customs duties can be income do not really happen.
