David Patrick Columbia is the founder and editor of New York Social Diary, a website that chronicles the lives of the Big Apple’s elite. Since graduating from Colby College in[…]
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A baffling gap in wealth.
Question: Is this the second gilded age?
David Patrick Columbia: The gilded age was a term that coined by Mark Twain. I think it might have been a novel that he wrote even. And it basically was referring to a very small part of the population – a tiny, tiny part of the population. The rich today are still a tiny, tiny part of the population, but their wealth is actually greater than it was proportionately, I believe, than it was then. I think that the term the “second gilded age” is now just another term that was coined by the mainstream media to explain something that is baffling.
Conducted on: October 29, 2007
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